


in this world, we’re just beginning

by cakesnake, nosecoffee



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Blatant Hurt, Comedy, Dirk’s Signature Quirkiness, Fluff, Flukes, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Pining, Romance, Semi-Slow Burn, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Rowdy 3 (Dirk Gently) - Freeform, bear with us, bucket lists, pining from afar, san junipero au, we watched San Junipero once and then started planning this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 07:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13243248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakesnake/pseuds/cakesnake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: “I'm going to solve a mystery.” He tells Todd proudly.Todd snorts. “Because you're a detective?”“Correct. And you're going to help me.” Again, telling him, there is no question, Todd is intrinsically linked, he can feel it.“Says who?”“Says me.”“This place is legitimately paradise, there's nothing to be solved, no mysteries here.”  He shrugs, and takes another sip of his drink.“If this place is such a paradise then why aren't you having fun?”(A San Junipero AU)





	1. taken by the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, it’s us again, back with a new AU. We hope you enjoy. 
> 
> San Junipero is an episode of Black Mirror, it is not an original concept. Likewise, none of these characters are ours.
> 
> [Here](https://open.spotify.com/user/pinuppastel/playlist/6o7j01DPfmPwqjWgkmHEWl?si=hyrIXzGbTBunAfsZrTBK3A) is our playlist for this fic, available on spotify. 
> 
> Title from Heaven is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle.
> 
> Chapter title from Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.

Todd knows that The Ridgley isn’t the most popular spot here, but it feels just right for him. This may be a party city, but he prefers a quiet drink to something that comes close to a rave. They remind him too much of what came before. So he comes to the quiet bar, as occupied as a place like this should be on a Thursday afternoon, despite it being a Saturday night. There are a few others like him at the bar, and the woman behind it looking cheerful but withdrawn.

There are a lot of newer full-timers who look like her around, happy to be here, but still wistful for what they left behind. He doesn’t blame them, but he knows that will never be him. He’s happy to be here for now, but he’s not staying, he will never stay.

He orders a beer, and settles in for a few hours of just drinking and breathing. It’s better than the alternative.

The woman behind the bar hands him his beer, letting the cap just drop onto the counter. She's very pretty, Todd thinks, taking a sip. She doesn't look like she quite belongs here, in this place.

She raises an eyebrow at him when she sees him staring. Todd blushes and looks away.

“I'm Farah.” She says, and he looks up. Her hair is a little more controlled than anyone else's, which only just enforces Todd’s theory that she doesn't hang around here a lot, despite working behind the counter. Her clothes, though in fashion, are less glitzy, less attention grabbing.

Farah extends a hand over the bar and Todd takes in, shaking. “Todd. You're not here, very often, are you?”

She makes a face at this comment. “How obvious am I?”

“I caught it kinda easily. That's not a bad thing, though. You look nice.”

“Thanks. I'm actually involved with someone, if you were making a pass at me.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, it's cool. You new?” She asks.

“Not really. I mean, here, I am. I usually hang around the more recent ones, but there's something almost horribly nostalgic about this place.”

“I hear that.”

“You don’t feel it?”

She smiles bitter sweetly. “I’m not particularly nostalgic.”

“What a nice way to be.”

And he wishes it were a joke, but it isn’t. He wishes he were less nostalgic. It might make this whole thing easier. He thinks it might make dying easier.

~

Dirk Gently is not enthused by the atmosphere of the bar -The Ridgely - but he supposes he can’t put his nose up at the way other people want to spend their evenings. Much less, how he’s about to spend his evening.

There’s a pull toward this building, like he used to have, in real life, when there was a mystery, and it’s been so long since he’s solved a mystery, so the pull is simply not to be ignored.

The place is largely empty, fairly quiet except for the faint noise of an eighties station playing over the stereo. There are a couple of people moping at the bar, and the woman attending the bar. With nothing obvious revealing itself as he walks in, he decides the next best thing is to sit at the bar and wait for something to happen.

It turns out the first something to happen is that the woman behind the bar approaches him.

“What do you want to drink?” She asks.

“Umm, what is the fruitiest and or sugariest thing you have?” He asks.

She looks stunned to have got a question rather than a straight answer. “I- I could probably manage a Piña Colada.” She replies.

He grins. “Perfect. I’ve never had one.”

“Good time to try one.” She replies, and wanders off to find all the necessary items to make the drink.

She seems interesting. A person of certain interest. He’s not yet certain that that interest is the same as his. He takes a look down the line of the bar, and sees a man, short, with brown hair and blue eyes, looking particularly sombre, despite the fact that Dirk had been assured that this place was one of happiness, regardless the circumstances of every person here: either dead or dying.

He’s also been assured he’s of the dying variety.

The man looks like he’s sad in because of the place, not in spite of it.

The woman returns with a cocktail glass with a gold-ish liquid in it, and a straw and cocktail umbrella sticking out of the rim of the glass. “Your drink.” She says.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

She looks a little confused about the question, and he is on the verge of elaborating when she replies. “Farah Black.”

“Are you a full-timer or part-time?” It makes it sound like a job, makes it sound like being here is a chore, but he has been informed that it’s far kinder than asking ‘ _Are you Dead or Dying?_ ’

An uncomfortable look from Farah. People generally don’t like to talk about their status, because it means confronting their own mortality. He finds it a little bit immature.

“I- uh, full-time.” She replies.

It’s rude to ask how someone became full-time, under what circumstances they died, and he knows that. He’s been told that. But he wonders about Farah. She doesn’t carry herself like she’s been relieved of a weight like most of the people who died of old age, and she looks like she was, for the most part, healthy before she died. He wonders what it was that got her in the end.

But that isn’t his concern right now.

“Who is that man?” He asks, gesturing to the man who stuck out to him in the first place.

She smiles affectionately, and he wonders if they have a _thing_. It seems unlikely from the way the man doesn’t seem interested in anything. “That’s Todd, he’s been coming in for a couple of weeks, constant. I guess you could call him a regular.”

He nods. “Why is he so-“ he makes a hand gesture to indicate how sallow and angry the man looks.

“I’m not at any friendship level high enough to unlock his tragic backstory.” She shakes her head.

“Gossiping about me, Farah?” Todd calls.

“You know I can’t stop talking about you.” She jokes.

Todd gives a forced and humourless smile. “Just like I can’t keep myself from raving about you.”

The whole interaction feels forced, fake, like an obligation on their parts. He is really beginning to wonder about the whole vibe here, and why it is that the universe has lead him here in a world where there shouldn’t be problems that need solving by him, so why is something about this place so like the mysteries he used to solve?

He sips on his Piña Colada, let’s the pineapple and coconut his his tongue, screws up his face in distaste and pushes the drink away.

“Farah, can we try that again with something new?”

~

Tina throws her head back enjoying the feeling of the music over the overloud sound of it. The bass is far too loud, and the drums far too frantic, but the feeling of it is simply euphoric, because being able to feel at all is a bloody wonder.

There are men, at the bar, on the stage, and they’re different from the crowd in here. They’re bigger than life, they have more energy to their souls than anyone here, and she thinks they must have been some of the first uploaded to the system.

They have to be full-time, because they are always here as she gets here, and always there when she leaves. And there is something about their energy, the absolute fullness with which they do anything. Even when what they’re doing is destroying something.

The people who come here aren’t after normal fun. This is a place for the ecstatic full-timers and the excited part-timers. It’s more than anything. It’s larger than life. It’s dark, and it’s crowded, and the music is loud, and the people don’t speak.

It isn’t about making connections, it’s not about connecting anything but bodies.

It isn’t fulfilling, but she’ll be damned if it isn’t a hell of a lot more fun than what she does for the rest of the week.

~

The Glitch passes through the crowd slowly, everyone sees it, nobody looks at it.

Nobody speaks to it, nobody acknowledges it.

It is allowed to pass through the pulsing crowd, through the closely packed people, and it makes its way to an exit.

Cigarettes may not taste or feel like much here, but it’s something to do at least.

Smoke slips in, smoke slips out of its lips. The Glitch is in a constant state of dormancy, of boredom, and it itches to be useful again.

It waits to be awakened.

~

Dirk approaches Todd, walks toward the end of the bar with the drink he’s finally settled on, something Farah made up, but it tastes just like gummy bears. He sits at the stool next to Todd, and stares at him while he figures out his next move.

“Do you need something?” Todd asks.

Dirk decides to answer truthfully. “I’m trying to decide if you’re a clue, an accomplice or an assistant.”

He looks up from his beer bottle with sunken eyes, and an expression that says a thousand words, and all of them amount to some variation of ‘ _fuck off_ ’. If there is something to him that tells Dirk that, he is intrinsically linked to whatever this is.

“I’m Dirk Gently, holistic detective.” He holds out a hand for Todd to shake. Todd gives him a stare.

“Todd Brotzman, unemployed.” He replies.

“Well, when you put it like that, I haven’t worked in years-“

“Part-time or full-time?” Todd interrupts, no hesitancy, no show of him worrying that this was rude.

“Part-time.” He replies stiffly.

Todd nods. “Planning on going full time?”

“Well, yes, it’s a wonderful step forward in technology, and I- Well, it’s narcissistic, but it’s hard to imagine a world that continues to exist after my consciousness ceases to.” He replies, a little stiffly. He can understand why people don’t like this line of questioning, he feels uncomfortable with sharing his reasoning for staying on once he… ceases. It feels far too personal.

Of course, it’s only right he asks the same questions. “What about you?”

“Part time.”

“And…?”

“No.”

This man does not want to talk to him. He finds it a little rude.

“I feel like I've told you enough to constitute your reciprocation.” Todd gives him a look that says _what the fuck is wrong with you_. “If you're not staying, and you obviously don't want to be here, then why are you here?”

He looks a little offended at this, and then sad. “Just trying it out.”

“But you're not staying.” Dirk repeats.

“Doesn't mean I don't get to be here.” Todd snaps, and takes a swig from the bottle in his hand. Farah gives them both a concerned look. Dirk shoots her a thumbs up.

Dirk gives Todd a calculating look, trying to see just why he was pissed off, just why he was here while already having made up his mind not to stay. He sighs when he thinks that it's none of his business.

The thought of leaving him there, moping at the bar, seems cruel. Dirk makes a choice.

“So, an assistant, then.”

Todd places the bottle back on the counter with a loud _thunk_ , that surprisingly, doesn’t startle any patron apart from Dirk. “Dude, what are you on about?”

“I'm going to solve a mystery.” He tells Todd proudly.

Todd snorts. “Because you're a detective?”

“Correct. And you're going to help me.” Again, telling him, there is no question, Todd is intrinsically linked, he can feel it.

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“This place is legitimately paradise, there's nothing to be solved, no mysteries here.” He shrugs, and takes another sip of his drink.

“If this place is such a paradise then why aren't you having fun?” Dirk challenges. He has no idea why he’s being so bold with this stranger.

“That's my own fault.” Todd’s face drops a bit, and his hand tightens around the cold glass.

“Then help me to help you have fun. Solve a mystery with me.”

“You're out of your mind.” There’s a little hint of a smile on his face, and Dirk feels hope light inside of him. Of course, he knew that Todd would help him with the mystery, he has told him now that there is one, because he is involved in the investigation, simply by virtue of knowing about it.

“Maybe, but that’s the first time I've seen you smile, properly, all evening, so I'm counting my blessings.” He says.

“...fuck it. Okay.” Todd shotguns the last of his beer.

~

“You want me to do what?”

“Well, I had a hunch-“

“And you want me to get in this _freezing water_ -“

“I watched you down enough alcohol to keep you warm. Think about me! I get cold at the best of times!”

Todd dips his toes in the frigid waves, and looks at Dirk with a pained expression. “What does this have to do with a mystery anyway?”

He shrugs. “A hunch. May as well take advantage of what we’ve got while we’re here. We only have,” he looks down at his bare wrist, “an amount of time left here until we have to wait another week.”

Todd looks down at his watch. “We have an hour and a half.”

“Exactly.” And Dirk, who has stripped almost entirely down, runs into the waves with new found enthusiasm, his gangly limbs only barely keeping him upright. The sea spray comes up around him, and he yells in shock. “Oh gosh goodness, it’s cold!”

It shouldn’t be endearing. And Todd told himself that he wouldn’t get attached to anyone here. But it’s incredibly hard not to be endeared by that.

He sighs, knowing he’s got all the way out here, and Dirk is right, while he’s here, he may as well experience something he can’t when he’s awake. So he steps away from the water, and starts stripping down to follow Dirk in.

“You know,” Dirk calls from the water, “if you go a little slower, you might actually avoid swimming at all.”

He sticks his tongue out, toes of his shoes, shucks his shorts further up the sand, and runs into the sea before he can second guess it. He dunks himself under the surface of the freezing water, and the current brings him up right next to Dirk.

“Jesus!” He exclaims, and Dirk laughs. He wipes the salt water from his eyes, and brings in the slightly warmer air. “Oh, this was the _worst_ idea!”

And he laughs. Properly. For the first time since he started coming here. For the first time since before everything went wrong. He laughs hysterically, and it feels like he can’t stop, won’t ever stop. The whole situation is so utterly ridiculous.

Dirk starts laughing beside him.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this!” He exclaims. He shivers.

“I can’t believe you let me talk you into this!” Dirk replies, and Todd reaches out and pushes him into the oncoming wave, and Dirk laughs and kicks, and it’s actually fun.

They stay until they fade away, and Todd can’t help hoping that he’ll find Dirk again next time they return. He knows that Dirk _knows_ they will meet again next time.

He wants to know how he knows.

~

Farah sleeps in. She never used to sleep in. But now she’s at liberty to sleep as late as she wants, eat as much as she wants, do whatever she wants, and she will never change. It’s almost distressing to her.

She was a morning person. She was an organised person. She had a schedule, and she followed that schedule, and now she has no obligations. And it’s strange, and it’s wrong, and she, like many others, wishes she were still alive.

In a way, she’s sort of relieved - there’s no need to be paranoid, here, no need to watch her back, take careful steps just in case it’s a trap. It’s not a trap. It’s paradise.

Sometimes, Farah wishes Lydia had just let her die.

The whole thing had been awful. Pulled over, the guys who directed them to the side of the road looked like police officers, were dressed like police officers. There were two of them. They weren’t police officers

She doesn’t think it’s fair, to dress as something most people feel they have the right to trust without question, it’s not fair, it _wasn’t fair_.

Lydia was in the back of the car, Farah was driving, Patrick was in the passenger seat. The man leaned over into the open window, she thought to talk to her. But there was the shot, loud, almost deafening, and Patrick’s head wasn’t there anymore. There was blood everywhere. Lydia screamed. Farah went into her proper bodyguard mode.

And he shot her. In the stomach. In the arm. She sped away. She was bleeding out. Lydia was still screaming, crying, begging. Patrick’s body was limp in the seat.

She knew he couldn’t be saved. He could never have been saved. He was dead on impact.

And with all of the blood she lost, she knew she couldn’t be saved either. She was dizzy, she could barely hold her head up as she drove them to the nearest hospital.

It had been a plot, Lydia told her, in her coma. They wanted to kill the whole Spring family. Farah saved her, she said. She couldn’t save Patrick though.

Lydia chose for her, to go into the San Junipero program. She said her father never got the chance, so she would pay for the woman who saved her life to live on.

She passed on painlessly, and came to on the beach next to an empty house, which seemed to be hers.

She fills her time now, by working at The Ridgely on Saturday’s when the Part Timer’s come.

Farah remembers just how distraught she was when she realised she was there to stay. It took her a few weeks to pick up on the sudden influx of people on Saturday’s, and a few weeks more to work up the nerve to even walk into one of the many bars that lined the shore. The guy behind the bar at the Ridgely took one look at her lost face and asked her if she wanted to help out.

And Farah took the job, gladly. It was better than moping around her empty beach house. Much better than hanging around the endless party goers at Wendimoor.

The busiest night of the week was always Saturday’s, so that was when they called her in, and that started at five pm. Part timers were always either ecstatic or resigned. Farah knew of only one part-timer who was both, and that part-timer couldn’t be bothered to give her the time of day.

(Didn’t matter, Farah’s eyes were always on the clock.)

Tina hardly hung around at the Ridgely anymore. She used to flirt with Farah over the bar, probably jokingly, considering that she never told Farah whether she meant to stay or not, and used to drink herself into a stupor until she faded away at midnight. Farah asked around and someone said they’d seen a girl like that at Wendimoor and Farah should check there.

And while Farah wanted to, she really didn’t want to step foot in there. That was a place for people who probably should have just passed on and spent their time getting out of their head for as long as they could.

So Farah stayed behind the bar, and served people who needed to be served, whether they knew it or not, and gave Todd sad looks over her shoulder until a ginger in an awfully bright jacket went walking over.

~

Things calm down a lot after midnight on Saturday’s. The Glitch has so much more space. Those who run Wendimoor are lying prone on the concrete ground of the warehouse.

A few full timers still loudly exclaim to each other, and down drinks like there’s no tomorrow, and The Glitch cannot blame them. There is no tomorrow. They are here forever. Tomorrow cannot exist when forever is a prospect.

The ones on the floor, the ones who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders when midnight strikes on a Saturday, they beckon it over and pass it a cigarette with a smile.

The Glitch takes it with no thought of implications.

There are no implications. There is no tomorrow.

There shouldn’t be a Glitch.

But there _is_.

~

**One Week Later**

Dirk waits for him at The Ridgley, sipping on Farah’s gummy bear drink. He has only been there for a few minutes, but there is still a tension in him, and a voice in his head that says _he’s not coming_. He tells it to shove that lie back where the sun doesn’t shine.

He will. He can’t have gotten hypothermia from being in an ocean that doesn’t really exist for him. Todd will appear, soon enough. Dirk wills it.

But minutes pass. People come, and people go. He has two more drinks, and his head feels fuzzy, and Farah looks at him with concerned eyes as two hours pass with no Todd.

It feels like a betrayal.

And then it occurs to him that anything could have happened in the last week. Anything. Dirk wouldn’t have been, couldn’t have been aware. Todd might have died.

He had t been planning on joining full time. So maybe he passed, and he passed up a chance to stay forever. Maybe he chose not to try it out with Dirk. Maybe he didn’t even give a thought to Dirk when he made the decision. Maybe he hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Which is fair.

But.

_But._

Dirk has no idea why that thought hurts so much.

He’s seething into his fourth drink of the night when Todd materialises in the door of The Ridgely.

He almost doesn’t want to say hello for all that Todd has put him though this evening. And all the time he has wasted.

But.

“Todd, hello! A little late, but I’m certain we can make up for lost time.”

And he is so changed from last week. Todd gives him a weak but genuine smile, and Dirk stumbles (having just downed the last of the drink he hadn’t realised had _that_ much alcohol in it) to him, ready to take him wherever his nose (his hunches) take them.

“Have fun guys!” Farah calls.

Dirk waves with a grin over his shoulder.

She gives him a thumbs up.

~

Dirk takes him to a nightclub. Which Todd doesn’t think is a great idea, given how wasted Dirk already is. But Dirk just about jumps for joy at the prospect.

“ _Todd_!” He slurs. “Dancing, Todd!” And he gives him that smile that belongs more on a golden retriever than it does on this man, and Todd cannot resist it.

He lets Dirk drag him in. He lets Dirk lead him to the dance floor. He watches as Dirk immediately ignores the beat and dances to music all his own. And it’s funny. It’s funnier than the rest of the evening, so far.

Todd’s been to plenty of parties in his time, danced with plenty of people, danced in front of more people. Somehow, this is different. He’s hesitant, looking around, and it seems, for a second, that everyone’s staring at him. Or maybe they’re staring at Dirk. He can’t blame them, he’s very distracting.

Todd decides to risk it. No one here knows him.

He rolls his eyes and follows where Dirk raises his eyebrow and beckons him, and starts dancing the way Dirk is dancing, like he couldn’t care less.

He could. He does. But.

But, at the moment, he doesn’t want to. Todd pushes it away, falls into the unfamiliar yet infinitely welcoming song blasting through the speakers. It’s almost like he’s been waiting to do this, even if he’s done it before. This is different. So different, always different. How, he doesn’t know, but it is.

(Everything in this ghost town is different, and Todd can’t tell whether he’s spooked or mesmerised.)

~

Tina is having fun. She will have as much fun as she can, while she can. While she’s here she can breathe on her own, here she can stand on her own, dance, and laugh, and sing, and hug, and _live_.

It’s so freeing.

But sometimes a girl needs a moment to herself. She walks out of the nightclub, feeling sticky, and sweaty, and sated, and wanders in the cool night air.

There are no expectations here, and no one will come looking, which is equal parts lonely and thrilling. She can truly be alone with herself.

She lies in the middle of a mostly abandoned road, looking up at artificial stars, simply smiling to herself because she might have taken many risks when she could, but she never took the time to be serene while taking them.

Never thought to. Never thought she’d need to. Never thought she’d regret it.

She’s not worried about being run over or something. No need to be worried about such a thing in a place like this.

Tina sits up, after a second.

She spends too much time at Wendimoor, spends too much time with a cup of beer over her head as she dances in a mosh pit, not worried about the loud music destroying her ear drums or the people pressed against her back and her sides and holding her up on their shoulders. Never worried when she’s here.

Tina gets back to her feet, feeling sweat cooling on her skin. It gets colder the later it gets, here, but it never snows, and it never gets unbearably hot. She walks slowly, contemplatively. She knows where her feet are leading her, had really been thinking about coming back for absolutely ages. It’s just that Wendimoor held so much promise that Tina could never truly tear herself away, until tonight.

The Ridgely, in comparison, is much quieter. The small dance floor provided is largely deserted, save for a few people slow dancing to the melancholy songs that don’t quite make sense but hold a nostalgic air to them. Farah doesn’t look up when Tina walks in, and Tina allows herself to feel a little disappointed at this.

When she reaches the bar, setting her elbows down on it the way her mother had always told her not to, Farah meets her eyes, and the surprise and hope in her eyes is met with a fierce battle in Tina’s belly.

She doesn’t say any of the words being forced up her throat, she just smiles, coyly, hoping Farah catches the mischief in her eyes, and says, “Long time, no see.”

Farah smiles, softly, serenely, in a way Tina almost envies. “Hey.”

(Tina wonders if that’s the kind of serenity that someone gets from living here, full time.)

“Anything here to drink that you recommend?”

“Nothing that’ll please you quite like a beer, I think.”

“Too much bad beer at Wendimoor. How about something new?”

“Well, one of my Saturday regulars has been buying this one for a while.”

Farah pours a few things into a glass, one definitely identifiable as sprite, and one as vodka, but Tina can’t identify the concluding sunrise pink colour of the drink. Farah pushes it across the bar to her, and she takes a sip, and widens her eyes.

“That’s so sugary, oh that’s disgusting, it tastes like you just melted gummy bears into the glass.”

Farah reaches to take it, muttering apologies, and Tina snatches it away from her hands. She looks very seriously into Farah’s eyes. “I want at least three more.”

Farah’s resulting grin lights up the room.

~

**1 week later**

“Fireworks aren’t even really that great.”

“Todd, I think that’s actual blasphemy. I might actually have to call you a heretic for that. Fireworks are magic.” Dirk exclaims, leading Todd through the pyrotechnics in place, ready for the New Years Eve fireworks display.

Todd has no idea why they would keep something like that here, but the whole place is made of nostalgia. Even if the time they’re passing here isn’t technically real, the event brings a sense of nostalgia.

“Weird, magic is usually what gets you called a heretic, in my experience.” He responds, and Dirk shoots him a dirty look while stepping over a particularly large rocket.

“Were you around when people went around calling people heretics?” He questions, like he’s caught Todd in a lie.

“No, but I’ve read history books.”

“Ugh. You have to light that one, Todd.” Dirk points to a long line of smaller rockets, all set up to be lit from the same string.

“Why?”

“It’s a feeling I have.” He says, with a straight, serious face. He truly believes that Todd _needs_ to light that particular firework.

“I don’t have much reason to trust your feelings. Last time I did that, I ended up covered in bubble mixture. It’s not an experience I want to repeat.”

“Please, Todd, you _have_ to light that one!”

“Ugh, Fine, do you have a light?”

“What?” Dirk’s expression is one of genuine confusion, and Todd wonders how he expected him to light fireworks without something to light them with.

“A lighter. A match. Something I can light that firework with.” He replies. It’s obvious, it should be. But maybe not, if you’re Dirk.

“Oh, no. I quit smoking many year ago. Those things kill you, you know?”

“Might as well speed up the process.” Todd jokes. Dirk stays silent. “It’s not midnight yet, we shouldn’t be lighting fireworks.”

“We’ll miss them if we don’t light them ourselves.” Dirk points out, pouting a little. “We disappear at midnight. We won’t see any of it.”

And he’s right, they are going to miss it. So, with newfound determination, Todd looks around to see if anyone left any matches around. And they actually have, and he shakes his head at the unsafe actions of whatever technician left matches unattended around fireworks.

He grins, grabs the box of matches, and pulls Dirk by his wrist to the firework he had pointed out. He pulls a match out, secretly a little delighted by Dirk’s giggle behind him, obviously caused by the fact that they’re basically in heaven on earth, and they’re deliberately acting like naughty children.

He lights the end of the string, and pushes Dirk ahead of him, trying to get them to a good vantage point to watch them go off.

And by god, do they go off, cracking one after another against the dark sky, each a different, and vivid colour, beautiful enough to make him forget that he should be distancing himself from Dirk, not reaching for his hand in the awe filled moment before they start being chased by an angry pyrotechnician.

~

**Yet Another Week Later**

“Look, I don’t want to offend you, but you don’t seem like you’re the best driver-“

“Oh, I’m not. But haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to drive as fast as they do in car commercials?”

Todd rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah, but I’d feel safer if-“

“Put on your seatbelt, and, a quick question and disclaimer - I am not planning to crash, but in the event that I do, you have your pain dial down to 1, right?”

“Yes, everybody does.”

“Debatable, some people are into that, but I’m glad you have yours way down. Are you ready?” Todd braces himself on the door and nods as Dirk puts his foot down on the accelerator of the electric blue Corvette.

They speed down the long beach side road, working up to upwards of 150 miles per hour, and after the adrenaline kicks in, Todd can’t help the hysterical laugh and shout that work their way out of him.

Dirk grins at that, easing them around a soft bend, and up a small hill, and lets out a whoop at the absolute freedom of going faster than a human was ever made to go.

The night closes in around them as they navigate the road surrounding the town at high speeds, and come to a stop just minutes before midnight.

It’s exhilarating, sitting there as the top of the convertible goes down, revealing the night sky, as artificial as it is. Word is, the programmer loved the stars, and tried to program the stars as accurately as possible. Todd couldn’t be sure, but it’s a nice story.

So he sits in a car with the only friend, bar Farah, he has made in years, and looks up at a sky that looks so close to the real thing, waiting to be taken back to real life. And he feels calm about it.

He has accepted his lot in life. He will hold what he has for as long as he is allowed to have it, but will not fight to keep it. God knows he doesn’t deserve it.

But, he thinks, looking at Dirk.

But.

If anyone deserves this perfection forever, maybe it’s Dirk.

He fades away softly, and when he opens his eyes to bright white, he can still sort of feel Dirk’s hand in his.

~

**Another week later**

“You know, I’m not this much of a risk taker in real life.”

“All the more reason to embrace it here. It can’t kill you here. Still got your pain dial down to 1?”

“Oh yeah.”

Todd clings to the railing of the bridge, trying not to think about the fact that he is going to just off this bridge, attached to it only by a rope that he has not seen used, and has nothing but assurances to calm him about the durability of said rope.

His only solace is Dirk beside him. Or, really, ten feet to his left, to avoid injury.

That and the helmets they have been given.

“I cannot believe I let you talk me into this.”

“Oh yes, I’m going to be having serious words with my hunches, this is ridiculous, honestly.” Dirk says, sounding more and more nervous as time goes on.

“Okay, how about we jump on the count of three?” Todd suggests.

“That sounds good.” Dirk agrees, suspiciously eyeing the drop.

“Alright, one, two-“

“Wait!” Dirk exclaims. “On three, or after three?”

“Um, on three.”

“Okay.” Dirk nods.

“Alright. One, two,” Todd braces himself, and bends his knees, ready to launch himself over the edge of the bridge. He watches Dirk do the same. “Three.”

He pushes up, out, _off_. He is flying through the air, toward the water below. His heart seizes in his chest, and he brings his arms in to his chest as he stops flying, and starts plummeting to earth, and if he stops thinking about the sticky end his brain has formulated at the end of this, he can embrace the adrenaline and the absolute weightlessness of this whole experience.

He shouts, whoops out all of the tension in him, and accepts it as the earth comes closer to him. And his face comes so close to the surface of the water. So close, he closes his eyes in anticipation of impact, and then, by the grace of god, or the rope, whichever, he is wrenched back upwards, away from the earth, and he laughs.

Next to him, ten feet to his left, Dirk is pulled back up, seconds after him, and screams.

He will never do this again, never wants to. But it’s good to know he has done it. That he can do it.

That he has options.

~

**A week later**

“No, Dirk, can we please stay here and just have a quiet night in, please, bungee jumping was nearly the end of me.”

“Yeah, hang out with me, guys.” Farah says.

The Ridgely is empty except for them. It fills Todd with dread. The thought that the people who are usually here might either be elsewhere in the town, or they might have passed in without a chance to be programmed in, and they might never know.

Dirk rolls his eyes. “Fine. But we have to have fun, it’s the whole point of this thing.”

“I thought the point of the thing we were doing was to solve a mystery.” Todd teases, and Dirk smiles.

“Who says you can’t have fun at work?”

Farah lines up two glasses with ice, and starts pouring liquor into them, and Todd blanches. “What are you planning?”

“I’m thinking a little game of Never Have I Ever. I want to get fucked up.”

“Could I have a gummy bear drink, instead?” Dirk implores, and Farah rolls her eyes.

“Fine, But you have to chug it if you have to drink. I’m not having you get less drunk than us. We’re drinking straight amaretto, so we’re drinking, like, 20% alcohol.”

“I’m pretty sure that concoction is at least 35% alcohol.” Todd says. Dirk nods.

“All the same.” Farah says.

Todd and Dirk settle at the bar, in front of their respective drinks, and Farah grins. “Are we all good on the rules of the game?”

“I might need you to run me through them.” Dirk pipes up.

She smiles. “Someone gives a statement of something they have never done. If you have done it, you drink. If not, don’t drink. The person suggesting rotates in a clockwise fashion-“

“It’s pretty self explanatory.” Todd interrupts.

Dirk nods sagely. “Play on.”

“Never have I ever…” Farah starts, thinking, and then grins evilly. “Gone bungee jumping.”

Dirk groans, and Todd tosses his drink back, swallowing it straight down, trying not to taste it. He’s going to get _so_ drunk.

~

“Never have I ever learned to play an instrument.” Dirk says.

Both Farah and Todd drink. “I told you about my band in confidence.” Todd says.

“And I told you about my stint on the clarinet in private.” Farah says. Dirk shrugs.

~

“Never have I ever… fallen in love with a patron.” Todd says, and Farah glares as she tosses her drink back.

“Oh my gosh, who is it!” Dirk asks, and Farah blushes.

“She’s- she’s sweet, and fun. She doesn’t come in here a lot anymore, but she likes The Gently. That's what I call the drink I make you.”

Dirk nods. “A woman of good taste.”

~

“Never have I ever worn a pink jacket and orange pants at the same time, and thought it was a good look.” Farah says.

Dirk scowls at her, downing his whole gummy bear drink. “That happened once. And I changed almost immediately.”

Todd laughs hysterically in the seat next to him. Dirk shoves him so hard Todd falls out of his chair, and onto the floor. He doesn't stop laughing.

~

“Todd! Todd, I've got it!” Dirk cries. It's really near midnight, now and the game has dissolved to just them making drunken confessions and raising their glasses, declaring, “I'll drink to that.”

“What?” Todd moans from the floor. He never properly got up, claiming it to be more comfortable than they thought.

“All the things Farah used against us in our game, that was all stuff you've done here, right?”

“Well, there were a few targeted ones from when I was younger, but otherwise, yes.”

“We’re both over your college band, Todd.”

“Great.”

“Anyway, the hunches! They're about you, Todd! They're leading us to do crazy things you never would've dared to try in the real world. It's a bucket list, Todd! It's your bucket list!”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

“I could do with a bucket right about now.” Todd comments and then vomits on the floor, much to Dirk’s amusement and Farah’s chagrin.

~

**A week later**

“Do you really think this is a bucket list? A universe mandated bucket list?”

“I think it’s possible.” Dirk says, as they walk down the shoreline.

Todd purses his lips, and wonders when he got important enough to the universe that it decided to act through a stranger to make sure he did everything he was too scared to do in the real world. He wonders why anyone out there would care.

They’ve left The Ridgely, sufficiently hammered, supporting each other down the seemingly never ending sand, marveling at the sunset, brilliant and beautiful in only the way something artificial can be.

Dirk’s arm is around his waist, holding him close, and _god_ , Todd should feel guilty, but so close to him, close enough to smell the sugar, and cinnamon, and sunlight, and _warmth_ on him, Todd can’t bring himself to have any negative feelings about this at all.

“Todd.” Dirk whispers. “Todd, _skinny dipping_. We have to do it.”

Todd laughs. He knows better, by now, than to refuse a drunk Dirk what he wants, especially when it’s hunch related. He’ll end up doing it anyway. So instead of protesting, or telling Dirk that that is crazy, which it is, he lets go, and starts stripping, because, really, _what is the worst that can happen?_

Dirk follows suit, and Todd tries to think of anything but all of the skin that Dirk is revealing to the world, that he is revealing to the world.

The universe is right, he would never do this in real life, not once in a million years.

But here, and now, and with Dirk, he can do anything.

He charges into the water, leaving his clothes close to the waterline, conscious of the fact that just anyone could come walking down this beach. He doesn’t turn back until he hears Dirk coming up behind him.

“It’s still fucking freezing.” Todd tells him.

Dirk nods, keeping his shoulders tight, and, trying not to be self conscious, Todd turns, and dives into the water, knowing full well he will be less of a shivery mess if he’s been submerged. He hears Dirk follow him into the water with a splash and smiles.

This is all so immature, and a little bit stupid, but all he can do is laugh as he resurfaces. Dirk emerges from the water about two feet to his right, spluttering the salt water, wiping it madly out of his eyes.

“Oh, this is very nearly worse than bungee jumping!” He exclaims.

“Only you would say that!”

“This is freezing, and embarrassing, and, oh _god_ , my eyes sting!”

“Well why on earth would you keep them open underwater?”

“I just- you have to see where you’re going, I don’t want to swim directly into a sharks mouth, or rocks or-“

“I doubt there are any sharks here, it’s supposed to be paradise-“ Todd points out.

“My point still stands. This is only my second time at the beach, I couldn’t have known-“

“You’ve only been to the beach twice? As in, the two times you’ve come with me?” Todd asks, and Dirk nods and runs a hand through his hair. And if Todd didn’t know any better, he’d say a bit of a blush starts blooming on his cheeks.

“I didn’t have many opportunities when I was-“

And Dirk stops dead in the middle of a sentence, looking quite sad and closed off. Obviously wherever he is in the real world, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Todd won’t push.

“I used to go to the beach all of the time with my family,” he supplies, filling the silence, letting Dirk let go of whatever he doesn’t want to say. “My mum and dad, it was some of the only times they weren’t really fighting. And, my little sister, she loved it there. We built sandcastles.”

They’re hit with a soft wave, and Dirk stumbles in an attempt to regain his balance. “Do they visit you?” He asks, water up to the bottom of his ribs. He’s very pale, Todd notes.

“Yeah. Sometimes I wish they wouldn’t.” He shakes his head. He doesn’t think about them when he’s here. They have no right to know what he does here. They have no right to rule his life while he’s here. “Does your family visit you?”

“I don’t have any family.” Dirk replies, a vaguely pained look on his face. “I don’t think anyone who cares even knows where I am.”

Todd frowns. He won’t ask why, no matter how much his curiosity fights him. He won’t ask where Dirk is, or why no one would know where he is.

“That must suck.” He says instead of all the burning questions on his tongue.

“It kind of does. Not much I can do about it.” Dirk shrugs.

Todd nods. “You know I never did this, in the real world that is.”

The moon begins to rise over the horizon of the water as the sun disappears over the hills behind the town. It’s so beautiful, and Dirk’s skin just about glows in the moonlight. He tries not to think that maybe it’s just that _Dirk_ is beautiful.

“Me either.” Dirk replies. “Another one of those things.”

“It’s fun, when it stops being freezing.” He remarks, and skims his fingers over the surface of the water. It sparkles with the reflection of the night sky, beautiful and clear.

“So you _can_ have fun.” Dirk remarks and Todd raises an eyebrow.

“What's _that_ supposed to mean?” He asks, getting closer so that their words don't bounce off the waves.

Dirk shrugs, but he's grinning. “Oh, sorry, I just thought you were an old man incapable of having a good time, and yet, here you are, skinny dipping in San Junipero with a big smile on your face.”

“For your information, I am only thirty-three.” Todd says, and splashes him, mockingly.

Dirk cries out when some of it gets in his eyes and then he scowls at Todd, and Todd can see right through it and see how much fun he's having. He splashes Todd back, and the frigid water on his skin makes him shiver.

“It's on.”

And the whole thing escalates to them splashing each other and trying to dunk each other under the water.

Dirk’s skin is slippery and smooth under Todd’s fingers, and his hair is a mess when Todd gets a hand on it, trying to push him under the waves.

And then it’s like the whole world stops, with them as close as this, Todd’s hand in Dirk’s hair, Dirk’s hand on Todd shoulder, and they’re both flushed, and breathing heavily, and it’s only natural, isn’t it?

Todd couldn’t say who moved first, but before he knows it, his mouth is on Dirk’s, and Dirk is clutching at his arm, keeping him close, holding him near, like he thinks Todd might run away at any moment. He assures him by tightening his hand in Dirk’s red hair, not pulling, just holding him there, and shifts so he can breathe, and goes straight back to kissing Dirk.

And, he thinks maybe he hadn’t realised it, but this is definitely what the whole thing has been leading up to. Something that feels as perfect as this, it can’t be anything but the endgame.

He brings a hand to Dirk’s jaw, trails it down his neck, over his chest, and round to the small of his back to pull Dirk closer. They couldn’t be too close, not now.

Dirk makes a little noise, beautiful, vulnerable, and it breaks the silence, and Todd is suddenly all to aware of what he’s doing. Of everything he has been doing. Of everything he promised himself he wouldn’t do.

No attachments, no loose ends. That's what he'd said.

And look at him now. Having the time of his life, opening his heart after he'd thrown away the key.

Todd pulls away so suddenly, that he slips over, going under just as quickly as he let go of Dirk. He doesn't come back up.

He leaves, just like that. He disconnects, and opens his eyes to bright white, breathless and feeling oh so guilty.

~

Dirk is cold and alone all of a sudden, where he had been warm and so close to someone else, closer than he ever has in life. He is alone, and breathless, under the rising moon, and Todd’s clothes are still on the sand, like they’re taunting him.

He closes his eyes and clenches his fists, trying to force the feeling of sadness and that sliver of anger back to where they belong. Which is buried way down.

He pretends like it doesn’t hurt that Todd just left him here. He pretends it doesn’t cement every awful thought he has ever had about himself in his mind. He pretends the tears that are spilling from his eyes are just remnants of the splash as Todd hit the water and left.

He pretends a lot of things.

~

Sometimes, if it’s busy enough, Farah doesn’t notice when new patrons come in, until they ask for a drink.

But even with this unusually busy night, Dirk, dripping wet, and sobbing is not something she can miss. All eyes are on him as he makes his way to the bar. His shirt is unbuttoned and he doesn’t have shoes on, and Farah knows immediately that this is something she has to work him through privately.

“Everybody out!” She shouts.

There is a resounding groan, and yelling, but everyone in there knows she doesn’t joke about things like this. They file out the door as Dirk sits down at the bar, sniffing and brushing hair out of his eyes.

“What happened?” She asks, leaning forward to him. And he sobs again, louder this time. “Oh, Dirk. What did he _do_?”

And Dirk shakes his head. “He didn’t- I shouldn’t have-“

“Come on, do you want another drink, what do you need me to do?” She asks.

“No more drinks, I’ll get more-“

“Okay, okay, tell me what happened?” She asks, rounding the bar, coming to sit beside him.

“It all went wrong!” He exclaims. “We were- we were having fun, and it was all going so well, and all of a sudden he pulled away, and he disappeared, he disconnected before midnight, Farah, and it has to be my fault, and he probably _hates_ me now, and-“

“Hey, hush, breathe for me.” She puts a hand on his shoulder and he flinches. “Come on, it’s all going to be alright, just breathe and we’ll work it out.”

He starts taking heaving breaths, and god, he looks pale than before. “Do you need a glass of water?” She asks, and he nods. “Okay, that’s something I can do. We’re gonna sort this out. It’ll be okay.”

~

The Glitch feels the whole universe freeze over. It knows something has gone awfully wrong.

All of the people here, in the place they call Wendimoor, they don’t feel it, they don’t know it, but as artificial as this universe is, the powers that be still pull the strings behind the scenes. Something in their plans has gone awry.

The Glitch has felt this before, when it was made, glitched into existence. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was never supposed to exist.

Whatever has happened, it is wrong, and it thinks that someone really ought to be fixing it.

It isn’t up to The Glitch.

It sits and watches the people sway carelessly.

~

Tina dances. She dances a lot. The lights, the pounding music, there’s so much of it, and it’s thrilling to be alive and aware.

There are so many people here, all of them swaying, grinding, colliding in this one place, where they’re all so coincidentally connected, so strangely in this space, when the woman next to her might be eight states away in an old persons home. The man currently dancing up behind her might be in a hospital in another country.

There is no way to know, but she is here in the middle of it, living, finally living.

It’s a wonder. It’s incredible.

It’s _everything_.

She shakes. Her hands are tremor filled, and her brain goes fuzzy, and her legs go weak. And she knows she should be pulling out. But she’s already here. She hasn’t discussed it with anyone, most certainly not the person who can call the shots, but if her body is going under, and she is already here, shouldn’t she stay here?

Her shoulders shake, and she’s gasping, but she wants to stay, she _needs_ to stay, she is determined to stay, she has to stay.

Somebody has a hand on her shoulder, is yelling, asking if she’s okay, and her knees give way, she’s on the ground, and she’s choking.

It’s not her choice, her vision flickers from the dark room with accents of neon, to bright white, and her body is arching off the cot. People gather around her, and her vision flickers to black.


	2. promised you heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be paradise, every inch manufactured to please and soothe. The only flaw is inherently human, because the only flaw does not lie in San Junipero itself, but in its residents. If they're not willing, if they don't see it as paradise, if they see it as the short end of the stick, nothing is good enough, anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, we're back! More angst this time, but also more fluff, and also more plot development. We hope that you enjoy.
> 
> Chapter title, again, from "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac

Todd isn't listening. He knows what they're saying.

There's no need for him to be paying attention.

He fidgets with his blanket, ignoring his mother scolding him. Silas stands off to the side of his bed, looking pained and angry. Todd’s father sits on the other side of his bed.

“I know that _you_ made the decision to do a sample package, and I kept my mouth shut about it, I did, but the things I've been hearing about your activities there, Todd, it's not right. Todd. _Todd_. Todd, are you listening to me?” She knows better than to snap her fingers in front of his face now - the last time she did that, she set off an attack and was inconsolable for hours - but she does try to grab his attention.

Her hand on his makes him pause from pulling a thread loose on his hospital issued blanket. Todd looks up at her.

His mother has never looked so old, never looked so tired. Todd supposes all this business wears on her the same way it wears on him. Todd supposes she wouldn't actually be here if she wasn't worried.

“I heard you.” He says, voice scratchy and hoarse. He always sounds like that, except in San Junipero.

She nods and leans back in her chair. “Todd, forcing yourself out of the session, it's not safe. Every time you leave early you force yourself into an attack. Last time it-”

She doesn't finish her sentence, wrist against her mouth to stifle the sob that rose up her throat, but Todd knows how it would've ended. Todd knows what she thought it looked like.

“I told you,” he sighs, returning to picking at threads, “I'm sorry.”

“You shouldn't be doing things there that scare you enough to force you out.” His father finally pipes up.

“It was an accident.” Todd says, not for the first time during the visit. Silas makes a sound sort of like a laugh and covers it with a cough. Silas knows what really happened. “It won't happen again.”

“Todd, your father and I, we don't think you should be going there.” His mother says, sniffling. “It's affecting your health, and we don't think it's right. Especially because Amanda…”

“It's not fair to your sister.” His father finishes.

Todd wishes he had the audacity to scoff. Wishes he could rebuff them, tell them that they're wrong, that she got just as much of a chance as him, but he doesn't.

He just nods. “I'm sorry. I already told you, I'm not staying, I'm just doing as much as she did.”

“It's unnatural, Todd. That place. It's not right.”

“You don't get to say that. You're not dying.” He snaps.

“ _Todd_.” His father growls.

“I'm old enough to make decisions for myself, and I've decided to have just as much of San Junipero as Amanda did before she died.”

His mother lets out a sob that's halfway towards a scream and runs from the room, a hand over her mouth. His father follows, giving Todd a harsh glare.

The grief never ceases. Todd tries not to think of it, but it's hard not to with them around.

He knows his mother feels about as guilty as him, having passed on the gene that made them vulnerable to this disease that killed and is killing her children. Guilt won't bring his little sister back. Grief won't give Amanda an eternity in San Junipero.

Silas walks over and begins to adjust Todd’s pillows. “One of these days,” he says, softly, giving Todd a sympathetic smile, “I'm gonna kick them out, myself.”

“That'll be the day, Silas.” Todd says, and gives him a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, in return.

He just wants to sleep.

~

Tina comes to in her hospital bed, the same one she’s been living (dying) in for six months now. It’s dark, the curtains are drawn, and she can say for certain that her eyes appreciate it. She blinks in what little light there is, and tries to sit up.

There are whole new tubes attached to her, whole new medicines in the cabinet, and her body aches.

And, predictably, there is Hobbs in the armchair by her bed, snoring, hair messy, showing he has had a fitful night.

(Days? Last time she had a seizure of that size, she was out for days.)

She presses the nurse call button, it’s procedure, so they know she’s awake, and she leans back, lets her muscles relax, lets the aches and pains fade away. The first nurse in has a serious but kind face, and he fluffs her pillows, checks her vitals, and ups her pain meds, all as quietly as possible.

Neither of them want to wake Hobbs.

“How long has he been here? How long have I been out?” She croaks, and he puts a Dixie cup of water in her hands. The water is fresh and cool, and soothes the throat she hadn’t realised was aching. She doesn’t want to think about the fact that that has to be the result of her screaming in pain she doesn’t remember.

“You been in a medicated coma for three days,” the nurse whispers in reply. “He was here when you went into cardiac arrest.”

Cardiac arrest. Her heart stopped functioning. She must have been close to death. Now more than ever, Hobbs is going to want to know her decision, and she’s not certain she’s made one.

The nurse leaves her in the dark, and Tina tries not to cry. But it’s hard when accepting your own mortality.

~

Todd really likes the nurses around here. They're all really nice and agreeable, and that might just be because they've been told that just about anything might set him off, but he likes to believe that's just how they are.

It's easier to talk to them if he doesn't think they're putting on an act.

His favourite nurse is probably Silas, but Panto comes in a close second.

Todd is a little surprised when Panto knocks on his door the day after his parents visit. Panto’s a little weird, he’ll admit, but Silas seems to like him, and his bright pink hair is something to marvel at.

“Hey, Todd.” He says, grinning as hard as ever.

“Hey, Panto. What's up?” Todd responds, putting down his book (he wasn't really getting into Pride and Prejudice anyway).

“My friend here was looking for some company, and I was hoping you could help us out.” Panto responds.

A girl in a wheelchair rolls into the room and grins at him with crooked teeth. Todd hasn't had an unrelated guest before. It's kind of unchartered territory.

He gives the girl in the wheelchair another look.

“Sure.” He says, and sits up, slowly. Panto walks over and adjusts everything, properly.

“Todd, this is Bartine Curlish. Bartine, this is Todd Brotzman. Call me if either of you need anything.” He pauses in the doorway and bites his lip. “Do try not to kill him, Bartine. I rather like him.”

Panto looks oddly serious when he says this. Todd turns to Bartine.

She rolls her eyes. “Don't listen to him, I'm not gonna kill ya. Also, jus’ call me Bart. Panto’s way too formal.”

Todd nods. “I think that's what makes him endearing.”

Bart snorts. “Sure, if ya swing that way.”

“I kinda do, but I think Silas definitely swings that way, especially for Panto.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Nothing good to do when you're here all the time than to shove your nose into other people's business.”

Bart laughs, full on belly laughs, and then coughs. “Oh, it’s so true.”

“How did you meet Panto?” He asks.

“I was his first assignment, his first day. I scared the shit outta him. We hit it off after that. He’s one o’ the few nurses who doesn’ treat me like ‘m made of glass.” She replies. It makes sense.

Neither Panto or Silas treat him any different from any other person, except not to trigger an attack. They’re honest, and they explain everything to the best of their ability.

“So, you've been here for a long time.” Todd says, and she nods enthusiastically.

“Eight years, now.”

“That’s a long time. What happened to land you here for eight years?”

She shrugs. “Car crash, they say it’s a matter o’ time.”

He smiles. “That sounds familiar.”

“My legs are just totally fucked.” Bart tugs on his blanket. “What about you?”

“I have a rare gene disease called Pararibulitis which causes me to hallucinate and experience tremendous amounts of pain where there's nothing happening.” He responds, trying to sound more cheery than he feels about the whole situation. “It almost always ends in death. I've had it for four years.”

“Gee, you went hardcore there, didn't ya?” And she laughs. She didn't immediately respond with sympathy, didn't pity him. She didn't reduce him to his illness.

And Todd laughs, incredulously.

He hasn't felt this human in years.

~

Hushed voices outside his hospital room. By the timbre of one voice, at least one of them is Panto. He has to assume the other is Silas.

“She’s probably not going to make it to Saturday.”

“You know she isn’t stable enough to visit as it is. Our best chance is to get her stable enough to visit on Saturday. She hasn’t made a decision, we owe it to her to help her make an informed one.”

“You _know_ she won’t make it. She won’t. A midweek visit is the best plan, don’t you see-“

“Tina _will_ make it to the weekend if I have to sign my soul away to make sure of it. Please see reason, Panto. The best we can do for her is get her to the weekend. At least to the weekend.”

There’s a resounding sigh. Panto isn’t keen on the plan, but he would do anything Silas asks of him, and they both know it. But, what disturbs Todd more is the mention of _Tina_. As in, Farah’s Tina, who, from the sounds of it, still hasn’t made up her mind about becoming a resident of San Junipero. And is short on time to make that decision.

He resolves to find her in the morning.

~

The moment he is left alone with Bart, he fixes her with a serious stare.

“Do you know of any ‘Tina’ here for the long term?”

“Why d’you wanna know?” She asks, looking suspicious.

“My friend, Farah, who lives in the San Junipero program is absolutely smitten with her. And apparently she doesn’t have much time left. I want to visit her.”

She stares at him for a while, as though appraising him, and then nods solemnly. “You want Tina Tevetino, fourth floor. She’s crazy cheerful. A little too cheerful for my taste.”

“Will you take me to her?”

“You shouldn’t be walking in your state.”

“Fuck that.”

“That’s the spirit.” She grins.

Bart helps him out of bed and lets him steady himself on the handles of her wheelchair. And they slowly make their way to the fourth floor.

Todd hasn't been in an elevator since the fire drill a couple months ago, and it makes him dizzy. There’s an awful sense of vertigo, and he closes his eyes in an effort to make it better. It only makes it worse.

The elevator dings, and the doors open slowly, and he wheels Bart out into the hallway. “Where to now?”

Before Bart can answer, another voice cuts her off.

“You two are not supposed to be here, especially you, Todd. You shouldn’t be upright in your condition.” Silas’ voice is instantly recognisable, and the both of them cringe at the stupidity of their plan. As if they could navigate their way through a busy hospital without getting caught.

Todd makes a quick decision.

“Silas, great. Can you take us to Tina’s room?”

“Whose idea was this?”

Bart and Todd point at each other.

“I'll never forgive Panto for introducing you two.”

“Oh, I think ya will,” Bart mutters and Todd punches her, lightly, in the shoulder.

Silas tips his head to the side. “What does that mean?”

Todd shakes his head - it's really loud and he just wants to find Tina. “Can you please just take us to her? I just want to talk to her about going full time at San Junipero. Then I'll go straight back to bed. I promise.”

Silas goes a little pale. “You heard that conversation?”

“We only wanna help.” Bart says.

Silas looks between them and sighs. “They are so going to fire me for this.”

Todd shrugs. “Make it worth it?” He offers.

Silas gives a short laugh at that. “Come on. Let’s get you to Tina. Just a warning, she is not well.”

“I got that from the _dying_ thing.”

Silas navigates then to a room down the hall, private, and probably very expensive. Todd wonders how long she’s been here. Todd wonders what she’s here for. Todd wonders a lot.

The first thing he notices is the occupied armchair, pulled tight to the wall. A man sits in it, and Todd thinks, depending on how this guy is feeling, he must either be terrifying or the most comforting person in the world to be around. Right now, he just looks tired.

The woman in the bed is so pale she just about blends in with the sheets. She is hooked up to a heart rate monitor and at least five different IV bags. In short, she doesn’t look like she will make it through the night, let alone to the weekend.

He wonders how aware she is.

“I'm getting visitors, now, Si?” She rasps, giving Bart and Todd curious looks.

Silas grins at her. “You sure are.” He replies. “This is Todd Brotzman and Bart Curlish.”

Bart waves. “Hi.”

Tina frowns at Todd. “Not the Todd Brotzman going on adventures with Dirk Gently in San Junipero?”

He nods, surprised she knows who he is. “The very same.”

“Farah told me all about you, which was surprising considering her complete lack of knowledge about you.”

“Well, how about we get to know each other?”

She smiles softly. “I’d like that, Todd Brotzman. As long as you can assure me you’re not here on behalf of Silas to convince me to hurry my decision along.”

“I can assure you that I’m here on behalf of Farah, is that any better?”

She frowns. “Did she send you?”

“No. Doesn’t mean I’m not here for her, though.”

She considers for a moment, and seems to come to a decision. “Take a seat, Toddy-B.”

There’s a plastic chair on the other side of her bed that’s vacant, but as he moves to take it, the man who had previously been sitting in the armchair vacates his seat, and approaches the bed.

“Want me to stay, Tina?”

She smiles. “Only if you want to, Hobbs.” There's an achingly fond tone in her voice and Todd peers at the man - Hobbs.

He assesses the room, glancing between Tina and Todd and Bart. “I'm gonna go get more coffee. If you need me…”

Tina raises an eyebrow. “Go freshen up. I'll be fine.” Hobbs nods and exits the room. She turns back to her visitors. “So, Toddy-B, what are you gonna say to help me make up my mind?”

Todd considers this, and looks to Bart. Bart shrugs and gestures for him to say something. “Why wouldn't you want to stay?” He asks.

Tina looks a tad taken aback. “What?”

“I mean, at least with San Junipero we’re assured paradise beyond death, and beyond injury and all that crap. It's like having a whole new life, only there aren't limitations. No diseases or hospital beds or medicines. So why wouldn't you take it up?”

“Sounds pretty convincing from a guy who's already decided to just die.”

“I have my reasons.”

“Maybe I have my own.” She counters.

“For being indecisive?”

“You don't know.”

“All I'm saying is that there's so much promise to the idea of staying, and you have someone there who won't be going away and who will, I can assume, love you.”

“...I just kept putting it off. I never thought I'd get sick, then I thought I'd get better. They only offer San Junipero to the dying, or the soon-to-be-departed. It became too real when they offered. I realised how serious this all was. Growing up, I always knew that death was unavoidable and natural. It never occurred to me that I would ever be given the chance to avoid it, and because of that, it feels wrong. I would feel selfish, I would feel vain. And I _want_ to go there and stay forever. But I don't know if I'm brave enough to just...accept.”

Todd doesn't mean to stare. Tina just doesn't seem like the type of person to come spilling out with all of that. Bart said she was crazy cheerful and Todd accepts that as a front for a scared, dying girl.

Bart leans forward, suddenly becoming the object of their attention. “That's why there's a choice. The reason there even _is_ a San Junipero is because people are scared. Starin’ death in the face the way you are? That's crazy brave. If ya decide to accept, that's brave too.”

Tina frowns.

Todd taps his hands against the arm rests on his chair. “I think it's scary to keep going. Because living, it’s a challenge. Keeping going. Accepting, and staying there, wouldn’t that be the biggest adventure? The ultimate challenge? I’m not here to make your mind up for you. I’m here to be a sounding board, to remind you that you have options, that there’s no shame in choosing either way. I don’t want you to think that everything is already planned for you. If you want to stay there, do what you want. It’s _your_ death. Take control of it.”

She sits still for a moment, looking lost in her own head, and more than a little conflicted. Her eyes fill with tears, and she starts speaking. “I _want_ to go.” She whispers. “I want to. But I don’t know how Hobbs is going to- it’s my main hang up, I don’t want to spend eternity where he isn’t. He’s my best friend, and he’s sacrificed everything to keep me comfortable here. I can’t-“

Todd nods. “Then you need to have a conversation with him.”

~

**San Junipero, Visiting Day**

Farah imagines, three hours into this session, that Dirk has decided to get fall-down drunk. Which means she'll be helping him clean up.

She should really cut him off.

He’ll just find another bar to go to, or get trampled in a mosh pit at Wendimoor.

(That's what people had been saying about that blonde girl last week, right? She fell down and no one would move far enough away from her to help her and she disappeared. Farah hopes it wasn't Tina. It probably was.)

Farah needs best case scenario with Dirk, so she just lets him drink.

Four hours in and it's clear that Todd isn't coming, or he's at least avoiding them.

Dirk is getting steadily more bitter, even ordering a drink she _knows_ he doesn’t like. Next time she sees Todd, they are going to have some serious words. Specifically about the soul shattering thing he did to make Dirk want to get this drunk for no reason. The man has his head down on a bar that he has remarked about the stickiness of more than once.

She’s about to cut him off when Tina appears in the doorway of The Ridgley. Her breath catches in her throat, because she looks more tired than she’s ever seen her.

The magic of this place is that they’re preserved as they want to be, at the time they’ve felt they look best, at the time they felt best. So Tina, as good as she looks, with bags under her eyes stands in the doorway of The Ridgely, looking like she has something important to do.

“Farah.” Something in her voice is broken, not quite as alive as she seems, and Farah rounds the bar to make her way to Tina.

“What’s wrong?”

And Tina’s face splits into a dazzling smile. “Nothing is wrong. Farah, I made a decision. I made a decision, but you have to tell me now that when Hobbs - my friend Hobbs - joins us, you’ll be okay with me hanging out with him, you have to tell me, Farah, that you won’t be jealous, that if you like him, you’ll hang out with us, or-“

“Tina, if you stay, I will do whatever you want for the rest of eternity.”

“Farah, I’ve made a decision. I’m gonna come here, I’m gonna live here, and stay here forever, with you, and with this place, and Hobbs is gonna come too.”

Farah can’t resist now. Because the girl who may very well be the love of her life is going to stay. She won’t disappear into nothingness. She is going to stay. Farah leans forward and kisses her, slowly at first, and then Tina leans in, and pulls Farah forward by her shoulders, and then it’s hard to be soft, when she’s right there and she’s _staying_.

They have the rest of eternity to be soft. Right now, Farah wants to show Tina exactly how happy she is that she’s staying.

~

Martin barely remembers who he was anymore. He was angry, before, and he was loud, and he was lonely. But he materialised here, hardly knowing what happened to bring him here, and there were others. Like him.

Loud, and angry, and exuberant, they became a sort of family. The place was barren at the time, barely anyone there, so they got to set up wherever they wanted.

The warehouse on the edge of town was empty, good for running, and yelling, which seemed to be all Vogel wanted to do (said he hadn't been able to in too long), and a good amount of space to set up something fun.

As it turned out, they all had a fairly unique, common ability, and setting up a nightclub was an easy way to get what they all wanted. The people flood in, and it’s easy to feed on their psychic energy without anyone noticing.

So they bring in the loud music, the neon lights, the drinks, and the people flock.

The boys never go hungry or unhappy.

~

**The Physical World**

It’s not nice. It’s never nice. When his sister passed, it’s like someone pulled an irreplaceable part of him out, and crushed it in front of his eyes. He couldn’t feel anything but pain for so long after it. He should never have had to see his sister go before him.

Tina is different. She went back into a coma after going back to San Junipero, and after a few days under, Hobbs agreed to pull the plug. She was gone in a matter of minutes, and uploaded in less than that.

(Tina’s last minutes are so peaceful in comparison to Amanda’s; less shouting, less people in the room. She doesn't seize in the bed the way Amanda did, and she doesn't gasp for breath like there's no air around her.)

And now, hours after, he and Bart are just having lunch. Awful hospital food, like nothing has changed. Like someone hasn’t just left, forever.

This is why he can’t go. Amanda never got the chance. He misses her, and she’s gone. Tina exists somewhere. She can’t be seen or heard from here, but she’s still out there, being stored away in a huge storage facility, and even further out, probably with Farah, reveling in her new life.

He wants that, he wants it so badly, with Dirk, and Farah, and Tina, but he can’t have it. He may roll his eyes at his parents, but they’re right. He doesn’t deserve it, not after what he did.

Not after faking the disease that ended up killing his sister.

“What’s your problem?” Bart asks over soggy salad.

He tightens his grip on his fork. “She died.”

“Yeah.” Bart responds, nodding in a way that loudly proclaims _duh_ without her saying it. “That was the point.”

“She died, Bart.” Todd repeats with more force. His hand clenches around his fork. He hasn't felt this hopeless in months. “It’s permanent, forever. She’s not ever coming back.”

“She’s in San Junipero.”

“That’s not real, it isn’t-“ He protests, trying to get all his thoughts out, all the whirling, cyclone thoughts that shriek for Tina, a girl he barely knew, to come back. They won't leave him alone, it's driving him insane.

“Are you saying that ‘Farah’ isn’t real?” Bart says, and she sounds agitated. “That the place you went to, that wasn’t real?”

“No, of course not-“

“Then what are you sayin’?”

“She’s gone _here_.” And it's such a final thing to say that it makes something in his chest tug painfully.

“You helped her make the decision.” This sentence is softer than the previous few, as if she's trying to calm down, but to bring him down with her,

“I forgot what it was like for the people left behind.” _I forgot what it felt like to lose someone_ goes unsaid but it hangs in the air like a grey storm cloud, promising rain. “I _forgot_ -“

“That’s what the funeral is for. The funeral is for the livin’. _San Junipero_ is for the dead. She’s okay where she is. You have to be okay with what’s happened.” Todd turns to look at her, and can't quite see her face, ginger hair hanging in the way. “It don’t mean you can’t grieve. But you have to accept that she’s gone here, but she _is_ somewhere else.”

And Todd is stunned to silence.

“You’re not the only person who’s lost someone.” She spits at him, slams her cutlery down on the floor, and starts wheeling herself out of his room.

The clanging of the cutlery rings in his head, bouncing around like the sound can reflect off non-existent walls. His hands shake, his mouth goes dry, and his brain feels fuzzy. Beside him, he hears something start beeping rapidly.

And then there are spikes sticking out of his chest, and the pain is excruciating. He screams.

There is _so much blood_.

~

It’s like waking up from a visit to San Junipero, waking up after an attack. Everything is suddenly bright, and he is so tired. His limbs feel leaden, and his head feels so very fuzzy.

Todd groans.

This feeling is all too familiar, now, but that doesn't make it any easier. Todd remembers the way Silas and Bart had come rushing into the room, and how Bart looked absolutely terrified.

He never wants to see that look on her face ever again.

Todd swallows, shallowly, and presses a button, calling the nearest nurse into his room. The curtains are never open in his room, anyway, after a particularly scary attack that happened just because he happened to be sitting in the sun and got a small shock. He has no idea what time it is. The drugs they use to cease his attacks usually knock him out, but how long he's out is never consistent.

The door to his room opens quietly and slowly, and Panto gives him a large smile. Todd is relieved that there is no pity in his eyes.

“Good evening, Todd.” He greets, with a whisper. “How are you feeling?”

“How insensitive would it be to say I feel like I've been run over by a semi truck?” Todd whispers back, but even that hurts his head.

“Not particularly.” Panto responds. “How am I for volume?”

“Just right.”

“What about lights?”

“I'll cover my eyes and we'll find out.”

True to his word, Todd lifts a hand to his eyes and he hears the click of the light switch as Panto enters the room and begins to go through the motions.

Carefully, he lifts his hand and though the light makes his eyes ache, it's nothing he can't handle. He shoots Panto a particularly weak looking thumbs up.

“Alright,” Panto continues to whisper, careful at how his footsteps fall, as he cross the room, helping Todd to sit up, properly. “You've been out for a while. More than a day, I'm afraid. Silas was afraid that you were finally on your last legs.”

“Silas worries too much.” Todd says instead of being shocked that he was out for so long.

“Silas is bringing you dinner, so I wouldn't say anything like that when he gets here.” Panto says, and smiles, cheekily.

“I'm not actually very hungry.”

“You know the rules, Todd.” The nurse tells him, cheeky look falling a bit flat, at this. “We've got to keep you healthy.”

“Yep.” Todd agrees, bitterly. “Healthy so I can waste away in this bed for the rest of my short life.”

Panto is properly frowning, now. “If there was something I could do to help, you must know I would do it without hesitation.” He says, in that charming way of his, that charming way that never ceases, even when he's upset.

“I do know that.” Todd agrees, and then grins to himself, a bit, trying to push his attack to the back of his mind. “But you know what else I know?”

“What?”

“That you like Silas.”

There's a pause, at this.

“...of course I like Silas.” Panto clears his throat. “Working here without him would be terribly boring-”

“That's not what I meant and you know it.” Todd interrupts.

The nurse sighs, and moves to adjust his pillows, again. “How did you figure it out?”

“Your flirting is obvious to even me.” He explains, smoothing his hands over his now-hole-ridden blanket. “It doesn't help that you look at him like he's your whole world.”

“I…”

“What volume are we at?” Silas enters the room with his dinner, looking quite cheerful, but whispering in case Todd is more sensitive to sound today.

“Normal, for the moment. Hi, Silas. Sorry for scaring you.”

“I should be the one apologising. I should be used to helping you out of your attacks by now, but this one was so sudden.”

“It's okay. Panto, could you get me a new blanket? I think I've accidentally put a few holes in this one.”

“Of course. I'll be right back.” Panto nods, and shoots him a look as he walks out the door that seems to plead with him to _not tell Silas_.

“Thanks, Panto.”

Silas busies himself with setting up the stupid little floating table that’s attached to hospital cots, as Todd formulates the next step in the un-official plan to finally get Panto and Silas together.

“Are you planning on staring at his ass for the rest of your life?” Todd asks, and Silas’s eyes widen to the size of saucers.

“W-what?” He responds, shakily, putting the tray of food onto Todd’s little table with less care than usual. That's fair, Todd supposes he’s distracted Silas quite well.

“Okay maybe not so much his ass as his face, but the sentiment is there.” This doesn't seem to soothe Silas, at all. Todd sobers. “The point is, if you like him please tell him instead of staring. I'm sure it'll do good for the both of you.”

“He doesn't like me like that. And even if he did, he's too good for me.”

“Says who? If you talk to him, if you say something about how you feel for him, even if he turns you down, you can know that you tried. That's better than nothing.” Todd can’t help but feel this is the kind of advice you give people despite not taking it yourself. It’s the kind of thing he should be talking about with Dirk.

Who he’s probably ruined any chance of a relationship with.

“It's just a stupid crush.” Silas looks down, solemn, a little heartbroken, and Todd wants to scream that Panto feels the same way, but it’s not fair to Panto to tell him that.

“Consider me your divine intervention; he's cute, and has a nice ass. You should tap that.” He says it before he can even process the words coming out of his mouth.

Silas looks suitably embarrassed on his behalf. It might be a good thing too. Todd feels too tired to be embarrassed for himself. “For someone encouraging me to engage in a relationship with this man, you do seem a little preoccupied with his - er - ass.”

“Just reminding you what you're missing out on.” He shrugs.

“I will never know what to make of you, Todd Brotzman.” This is the moment that Panto returns, holding a new blanket in his hands, this one a soft yellow colour instead of his previous powder blue. Silas goes dark in the cheeks, and finishes fussing about with the tray of Todd’s food.

For the rest of the evening, every time Panto and Silas brush hands or meet eyes they both go red and Todd can only grin to himself. (There is a brief moment of hopelessness that creeps in when they tell him that he won't be able to visit San Junipero that weekend, due to how weak he is, but he quickly dismisses it.)

When they leave for the night, Todd watches Silas take Panto gently by the elbow and softly ask him if he'd like to get lunch with him, the next day. Todd smiles as he falls asleep, because even he could hear the wide, toothy smile in Panto’s voice when he accepts.

~

**San Junipero, Visiting Day**

Dirk feels, almost certainly, that Todd isn’t coming back. Whether because his condition has rapidly deteriorated or because he doesn’t want to visit, he can’t know, and he ignores the possibility that Todd might have passed on, and passed up the opportunity to stay, like he said he would.

That’s not an option for Dirk.

When he arrived here, someone entirely new was managing The Ridgely. No Farah to be seen.

The man behind the counter assured him that it was because she was reveling in her newfound domestic bliss. That Tina had passed on during the week, and that Farah had taken the night off to see the town with her.

He’s glad for them. Of course he is. But he’s also lonely. It’s incredibly lonely here, despite all of the people. The only thing they have in common is their conditions - Dead or Dying - and no one wants to talk about that in what they have misconstrued to truly be the heaven of the new age.

So, he sits stone cold sober on the same beach where Todd abandoned him, watching the waves come in with perfect form, and watching the water roll back out to for the next wave. The moon glitters on the ever moving surface of the water, And is reminded, against his will, of the bright smile on Todd’s face that night, as they acted like careless children.

This was supposed to be paradise, every inch manufactured to please and soothe. The only flaw is inherently human, because the only flaw does not lie in San Junipero itself, but in its residents. If they're not willing, if they don't see it as paradise, if they see it as the short end of the stick, nothing is good enough, anymore.

Dirk sinks his fingers into the sand, soft and damp under the pads of his fingers.

He can't help missing Todd, which is ridiculous, because Todd probably doesn't miss him, wherever he is.

He stares at the fake moon, and then falls back against the compact sand of the shore, staring up at the unbelievably bright sky, so full of stars that shouldn't be visible with all this light. It's a beautiful view. Dirk feels like crying.

In a town full of people just like him, he has never felt so alone.

~

The Glitch feels melancholy roll throughout the warehouse, the wind, the very ground it stands on, feels it rock into its body the way the unforgiving tide does to a rock in its way, wearing it down to nothing.

The person feeling so sad is being worn down, and probably doesn't even know it.

The Glitch looks around the warehouse, out over unseeing eyes, deaf ears, and mute mouths, trying to find the source.

They are not here. They're further, yet closer; they are waiting for someone to share the view with, someone to understand, someone in particular. The Glitch wishes it could tell the poor soul that the person they seek is not here.

They probably already know.

The Glitch says nothing. The Glitch does nothing. The Glitch sinks into the steady, overbearing beat of a song foreign to its ears, and pushes away the tidal waves of sadness.

The Glitch has no time for things like wishing it knew who was waiting underneath the open sky with a hope that is flickering. Regardless of the little time it has, it wonders.

~

**The Physical World**

Bart is there before he wakes up, looking guilty and sadder than he’s ever seen her, sitting by his bedside, like she’s holding vigil over him. She looks relieved to see him open his eyes.

“You know, you would have known if I was dead,” he tells her, his voice rasping like sandpaper. “They’ve got me hooked up to a whole new machine now.” He taps the heart rate monitor.

“I wanted to say ’m sorry, I was harsh with you last time, an’ I set off one o’ your attacks.” She looks genuinely contrite, and it almost pains him to hear her being so serious.

“It wasn’t your fault, Bart, literally anything could set off one of my attacks. Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He assures her.

“You told me why you’re in here. You told me everything. I thought, maybe I could tell you a few things. If you wanted. Since it looks like you won’t be getting outta that bed for a good long while.”

“Maybe not until I’m dead.” He tries joking, but her face only falls at the reminder that he is, in fact, actively dying. “Bart, I’d love to sit and listen to you telling me more about yourself. Like, _hey_ , does anyone visit you, here?”

She smiles, though it’s a little pained. “There’s somebody used to. I’ve only have five friends in my life. You, and Silas, and Panto count. I’m pretty sure the other two are dead.”

“‘Pretty sure’?” He pries.

“One of ‘em is definitely dead. The other, I’m not so sure about. He had a habit of getting himself tied up in tricky situations, and not quite knowing how to get out of ‘em. And actually, I know that he might be dead or dying. You seen him. In San Junipero. Dirk Gently is his name.”

Todd’s heart leaps at the mention of his name. “You know Dirk?”

She smirks. “Yeah, I knew him. We were in the same car crash that fucked my legs and lungs up. I dunno what happened to him after that. I always thought of asking after him, but by the time it occurred to me, so much time passed, I figured it would be insensitive.”

“He isn’t dead.” He tells her. “He’s still part time. And if you ended up here, then surely he did too!”

At that moment, Panto walks in.

“Bartine! Todd! Good morning. How am I for volume, Todd?”

“Perfect. Tell me, Panto, is there anyone in this hospital under the name ‘Dirk Gently’?”

Panto squints at him. “No, there’s not-“

Bart sighs. “What about ‘Svlad Cjelli’?”

Panto’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well, yes-“

“He always _hated_ that name.” She murmurs, and Todd can’t help but be confused. Why on earth would Dirk be registered under a different name in the real world? “Panto, can you take us to see him?” She asks.

Panto looks between the two of them. “Screw it. Come on, Todd, let’s get you in a wheelchair.”

~

Todd hadn’t expected this. When Dirk was reluctant to talk about the real world, and his status, he hadn’t expected this.

The man lies on the bed, looking as though he hasn’t moved in too long. Bart says the crash was eight years ago. Panto says Dirk has been in a coma for just as long.

He looks more vulnerable, more childlike here in a hospital gown, sleeping for an eternity. Panto says that they are quite certain he will never wake up, but that the man who is registered as next of kin, one Scott Riggins, refuses to take him off life support and give him a dignified death.

The amount of machines and tubes surrounding him is overwhelming. Tina had at least half the amount, and that was still staggering, and Amanda had gone so quickly that she hadn’t been attached to anything. Dirk looks more machine than man, at this point.

“I didn’t expect this.” He says out loud.

Panto’s voice is hushed. “He isn’t technically awake or aware, but studies show that coma victims can hear you when you speak to them.”

Todd doesn’t know what he wants to say, though, it’s probably good to starts with an apology. Panto wheels him closer to the edge of Dirk’s cot, and Todd can’t stop himself from reaching up and taking Dirk’s cold hand.

“Hey, Dirk.” He starts, and his mouth is suddenly dry. It doesn’t feel like talking to Dirk. It feels like talking to the body that used to be Dirk’s. His hand is so cold, where in San Junipero, it feels like he has been constantly warmed by the sun. “Guess what? We’re in the same hospital. The same damned one, what’re the chances of that? I bet you could tell me, if you were able to. But you’re not. And now I get why you didn’t want to talk about all this,

“I’m not gonna lie, it all looks quite dire from the outside. You know you’re hooked up to a machine that does your breathing for you? Of course you know. You’re living it. I’m just a spectator.

“I want to apologise. For what I did. I must have hurt you. And knowing what I know of you, it’s still hurting you, probably. All I can say is that I was scared, that I was stupid, and scared of how much I felt - _feel_ -for you. It’s an excuse it not even a good one, but it’s all I have.

“I would have come in to see you last Saturday, but the whole dying thing caught up to me, and they said I was too weak. I would have explained all this to you, there. But, um, they didn’t want to risk anything. But guess who I met here, you’re never going to believe it. Or maybe you will, you’re hard to surprise with things like this - did you ever try reading people's futures, I bet you’d have a knack for it - anyways, I found your friend, Bart Curlish.”

And Bart rolls in close, observing him, and the room feels tight, his lungs even tighter, and he can’t stand to look at Dirk like this anymore. “Panto, could you take me to the hallway?” He breathes.

Panto obliges, and squeezes his shoulder gently as he takes him, instead of just out to the hallway, all the way back to his room. “Don't worry about Bartine, she can be trusted to be left alone, more often than not. Let’s get you back into bed.”

“Who is Scott Riggins?” Todd asks quietly, utterly perplexed as to why a man who, according to Dirk, doesn’t visit, wants to keep a man clearly close to death alive, despite the fact that Todd knows he should have been allowed rest many years ago.

“The way I understand it, Riggins fostered Svla- Dirk when he was younger, after he was orphaned. He later became Dirk’s boss in a job we have not been privy to. But given what we know about it, and about Riggins, it’s likely it was with one of the bigger defence agencies in the country. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“You mean Dirk was with the CIA or something?”

“Or something.” Panto agrees.

“Shit.” He wants to punch something. “And there's nothing we can do?”

“If he had a spouse or a biological family member, sure, but none of those are on his record, so, yes, there's nothing we can do.” Panto’s hand is light on his shoulder. All touches here have to be. Too much pressure and it could set off an attack. “I'm sorry, Todd.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Panto.” He replies.

~

Bart is quieter than he has ever seen her, silently staring into her jello like it holds the answers to the biggest questions in the universe. She seems almost reverent in the face of her discovery.

Todd knows what she might be thinking. Something along the lines of _How dare they?_ Or _He deserves so much more than that_. He’s thinking it too.

He’s really not hungry, but Silas gave him a look that implored him to eat. So he’s forcing the jello down. It tastes worse now than usual, and he wonders if it’s a new kind or if it’s just the sour mood he’s in.

“What’re ya thinkin’?” She asks him, softly.

Todd considers this. “That he must be really lonely.”

She nods. “Yeah. I think so, too.” She picks at her own jello like it's no longer enthusing her. “I guess that's why he goes to San Junipero.”

Todd breathes deeply. “He was always really sad whenever we had to leave. He doesn't want to leave.”

“Well, it's not like they'll let us do anything about it. Mr. Riggins is gonna keep Dirk alive forever in the hopes that he'll wake up.”

Todd frowns and puts his jello cup down on the floating table attached to his bed. “Unless…”

Bart tips her head to the side, giving him a quizzical look. “‘Unless’ what?”

“Unless he has a blood relative or a spouse.”

“What's the supposed to mean?”

“It means that I have a plan.”

~

**San Junipero, Visiting Day**

The moment Dirk comes to consciousness, he feels the need to shake the deep sleep off of him. It’s the first moment he has had to process the fact that _Todd found him_. He doesn’t know how to feel about it.

He has no idea how he looks there, anymore. Furthermore, he never wanted Todd to see him so vulnerable. He says he’s hooked up to too many machines, and of course Dirk knows, of course he can feel them every moment of his existence. But it’s scary to hear it from the outside.

But Todd is sorry. And Todd feels the same way, presumably. All he can hope now, is that Todd would come back.

He opens his eyes, and sees the sky, clear and blue above the sea that stretches out as far as the eye can see. He sits up from the sand, and shakes it from his hair, and is suddenly in shadow.

He looks up to see Todd for the first time in three weeks. He can’t help the way he leaps up to hug him.

Todd gives a soft laugh. “I missed you too.”

Dirk pulls back, and swats Todd’s arm. “Where were you?”

Todd looks down, ashamed. “I got scared, you know, of the way I was feeling, and I-“ He cringes a little. “Pulled myself out of the program manually.”

“Todd! You know that’s dangerous!”

“Yeah, I do. I sent myself into a fairly major attack, and I was too weak to come back the first weekend. And then there was another attack, and they wouldn’t let me come back. I’m here now.”

“You are.” Dirk says, and, _god_ , he’s not in control over his own body, because he watches his hand stroke over Todd’s cheek, and watches Todd lean into it. There’s a moment, perfect as can be, where it’s just them, standing with feet in the sand, light breeze moving their hair, sun low in the sky.

Everything is alright.

Todd seems to wake from a dream. “Dirk! God, I saw you, and-“

“I’m sorry, you should never have seen me like that.”

“No, I mean, Dirk, you aren’t…” He trails off, and tears spring to his eyes. “You’re not living. They’re just keeping your body alive, you’re not there, anymore.”

Dirk doesn't want to think about it. “It doesn't matter. I don't care. I get to be here, and that's enough for me.”

“For seven hours a week, that's not enough. That's not fair. They're keeping you there on the off chance that you'll wake up, and _that's not fair_. Not to you.”

“It's not like I can just tell them to kill me. I would, if I could, but I can't tell them anything, Todd. I'm fine, you don't have to worry.”

“I do, actually, have to worry. Because your work is keeping you alive, the only way to undermine that is if a blood relative or a spouse intervenes.”

“Todd, my family is dead, and I've never been married in my life.”

“Would you like to be?”

“What?”

“Dirk Gently, will you marry me?”

“I…Todd, I'm in a _coma_. How can I-?”

“There's technology, there's ways, I'm sure we can, somehow…” he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You heard me when I talked to you, in your hospital room, I don’t- we could find a way to do it through the San Junipero tech. Get married right here, on the beach-“

“You can’t just say these things, and raise my hopes, you need to have a plan, Todd! God, if I’d thought of this, I’d have used it to entrap a man to kill me months- _years_ ago!”

And Todd smiles, slyly. “Does that mean you accept, if I can make it happen?”

And Dirk is flummoxed, only for a moment. “Of course. You would seriously be willing to do this for me?”

“I would, I am happy. I want to make you happy, if this will make you happy, then I will do it. Don’t forget, I am the one who brought it up.”

“Living here, forever, I will be happy. With you, I will be happy. Free from rotting in a hospital day after day, I will _definitely_ be happy. I just can’t believe you’re willing to go through something like this, all for me. So yes, I am willing to marry you.”

Todd grins. “I _was_ hoping you’d say ‘I Do’.”

Dirk can’t help but bark a laugh at that. “You are such a-“ He doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because Todd has brought him close, so close, and looking for something in his eyes, and after a few moments, he realises, he’s looking for Dirk to say or do something, initiate contact, and that, _that_ , he can do.

The kiss is sweeter, slower than the one before, and it takes all of Dirk’s control not to do something stupid, and move to fast, and scare Todd away again. It seems he didn’t need to, because all off a sudden, Todd is dragging him back down to the sand, and Dirk cannot imagine what he might have been worried about, anymore.

~

They lie under the stars, beautiful and bright, pressed against one another. It’s warm, _so_ warm, and so pleasant. Dirk cannot find a single thing wrong with this moment.

“So,” Todd murmurs, “we can convince someone to use the San Junipero tech- to ascertain your consent - then it’s easy. Or it should be.”

Dirk smiles. “I like that, all the hard things, out of the way.”

“It won’t be easy, but god knows, it will never be as hard as this.”

It’s a nice thought, and the hint of _forever_ in it makes slipping away with midnight a much more manageable task.

~

**The Physical World**

Explaining the idea, however, is not nearly as manageable as he would've hoped. Panto looks conflicted as he says, “Todd, what you’re asking for-“

“It’s near impossible, but I have to try, for him.” Todd insists, and he wonders what the him from before San Junipero would think of all this. “What he has here, he doesn’t want it, he’s told me.”

“We cannot- he’s in a coma!” Panto runs a hand through his hair and carefully takes a seat on the end of Todd’s bed. “He can’t give consent.”

“Then we go to San Junipero, we can have a witness, if we can find out if it’s legal-“

“Todd-“

“I have to try for him, Panto!” It's so strange, this sudden shift. This instance, this hope. He never expected to feel like that again, not after Amanda, and certainly not after getting sick with the same disease that kills her, the one that's killing him. “It’s the least I can do. Try and give him a decent death. One that his current next of kin will not give him.”

There's a moment of silence. Panto stares at him, like he's trying to figure out what to do. Todd knows what he's saying sounds insane, but it's the only thing he’s been serious about for years. “I’ll see if we have someone here who can discuss with you whether it is an option, and if it is, you might want to contact your parents. This seems important to you.”

Todd laughs at that, a little bitterly. “They won’t come. But I’ll invite them. That’s the best thing I can do.”

~

As it turns out, it’s not the first marriage of this kind that has been performed, and it would be perfectly legal, if they do as Todd had planned, marry in San Junipero, where Dirk’s consciousness is still active.

The one caveat, is that his next of kin must be informed.

But, the loophole that Silas found in that, was that he must be informed, not necessarily consulted.

So the wedding goes on.

Predictably, Todd’s parents refuse his invitation, knowing his intentions directly after the marriage was to take his newly wedded husband off his life support. They do not agree with the intentions of the marriage.

It doesn’t matter. The wedding is not for them. First and foremost, it is for Dirk. And then it is for them both.

The ceremony is short, only the bare essentials, because they got ten minutes, and only a few witnesses. So they stand on the beach, like he told Dirk, dressed up like Dirk wanted, in front of the hospital priest, and Panto, Silas and Hobbs. Dirk brought Farah down to watch, opting to leave Tina at the Ridgely.

They make their vows, and exchange rings, rings that only exist in San Junipero, and they kiss, making it official. The priest will sign the papers on Dirk’s behalf when they return home.

He has only a minute to hold Dirk before they have to return to the Physical World, and he wants to make the most of it.

“I’ll be back on Saturday. I promise.” He pulls a hand through Dirk’s hair, and pulls him close, so that Dirk’s face is buried in his neck.

“I know. I look forward to it.” Warm puffs of air carry his words, and Todd smiles. “And just so you know, they’re gonna make sure I don’t feel anything. _Please_ , don’t feel guilty.”

Todd turns his head so he can kiss Dirk’s cheek. “I’ll try. I care about you, so, _so_ much.”

“I know. I love you too.” He lifts his head, and kisses him, softly, gently, and it’s a beautiful moment, that ends too soon, as Todd begins to fade back into the hospital.

He hopes that he made the right decision.

~

Dirk, like Tina, slips away peacefully, quietly. It’s almost beautiful. He signs papers, and somebody connects Dirk back to San Junipero, and uploads him. And then everything is turned off. He breathes for himself for about two minutes before the heart rate monitor, the only thing he’s still connected to, shows him flatlining.

He has to remind himself that Dirk is still in San Junipero. He has to remind himself of what Dirk told him while they were there.

It doesn’t mean he doesn’t cry, though. He holds Dirk’s hand, cold as ever (and it’s only going to get colder, though he tries not to think that), and he sobs. Everyone sits in with him until Dirk goes.

It feels odd, knowing - as he goes back to his room - that Dirk is no longer out there.

Now, he exists only in San Junipero.

~

(He asks Bart why she declined the invitation. She just shakes her head and tells him it isn't her time, yet.)

~

Arriving back on the beach, feels like a dream. Like the best dream. Because Dirk is back there. Back in the suit he insisted they wore. Back in the ring they promised each other forever with.

Todd wonders idly if he _can_ give forever now.

He wonders if he can keep his promises now that he’s committed himself so deeply to this man.

He doesn’t wonder for long, because Dirk kisses him the moment he gets close enough. It’s fast and passionate. And it’s everything Todd craves.

That’s the moment he _knows_  he can give Dirk forever. He may still feel a duty to his sister, but his _husband_  is here, and his promise to a living person has more weight than his promise to the memory of Amanda.

Todd pulls back for one moment, pleased to feel the cold of the metal ring on his cheek, where Dirk cups his jaw. “Go slow.” He grins like a fool. “We have forever.”

And Dirk laughs against his mouth, and pulls out to spin him in the sand like a little child. “Forever,” Dirk breathes, “is an awfully long time. Are you sure you won’t get tired of me? I’ve been told I’m only tolerable in small doses.”

“Not true, I’ll never get tired of you. There’s always something new, isn’t there?”

Dirk seems pacified by this answer. “Come on, I thought we’d go somewhere special, since this is technically our honeymoon!”

“Is it a bed?”

Dirk rolls his eyes, a little. “Har-har, no. But, that can be arranged, if you so wish.”

Todd bumps his elbow lightly into Dirk’s ribs, and Dirk grabs him by the elbow, tugging him over to the electric blue Corvette they went driving in, weeks ago.

It's a bit of a drive, though the town around them never wavers nor dissipates, proving just how large this place is. Dirk drives them to a manky looking warehouse up on the cliff over the seemingly infinite stretch of beach.

The music is audible from even as far away as where they parked.

Todd raises an eyebrow. “A rave? I never picked you as the type.”

“I'm not, but I have a hunch that you might be.”

Todd laughs. “I haven't been to rave since I was in college.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Ages.”

“Good time to get back into it.”

The warehouse is no less manky on the inside, and teeming with drunk and high partygoers. Todd feels overdressed. Dirk raises his eyebrows, though whatever comes out of his mouth is inaudible over the loud, metallic music blasting over huge speakers around the room.

Todd gestures down at his suit and raises his own eyebrows. In the blink of an eye, Dirk is back in his normal clothes, which, still a bit dressy, are just ridiculous enough to work. Todd glances back down at his clothes, and finds himself wearing clothes that his younger self might've worn. Just a black t-shirt and skinny jeans.

They nods at each other, and venture into the crowd of people, together.

“I'll try and find something decent to drink!” Dirk yells in Todd’s ear, and quickly abandons him to the thrum and tide of the crowd.

“Please don’t get me drugged!” He yells after him.

He feels eyes on him, and the hairs in the back of his neck stand up. When he turns to look, there's no one staring at him. It’s so strange, in a place like this, to feel watched, when all anyone is looking for is their own happiness.

The feeling is gone as quickly as it came.

~

It sees the melancholy one, and a stranger, and it feels unnerved. And it feels.

The Glitch doesn't like it.

~

The filthy bench where they keep stacks of disposable cups and keg of beer is crowded over - this place, Wendimoor or whatever, sorely needs someone manning the drinks. He struggles getting the beer in the first place, and then struggles not to spill it on himself or anyone else as he makes his way back to where he left Todd.

Todd, his husband.

It still makes Dirk giddy to think about it, even if a sneering part of his mind tells him Todd only did it to get him out of that hospital.

Todd isn't where he left him, or, at least, where Dirk thinks he left him (this place moves like it's alive, ever changing, never the same) and Dirk sighs in frustration.

In hindsight, bringing Todd to a rave probably wasn’t his best idea - they probably would've been more comfortable at the Ridgely with Farah and Tina, familiar and quieter. Or even in the bed Todd suggested.

He’s gone and lost his husband because of a stupid hunch.

~

The small-ish guy in the red and black polka dot t-shirt runs fast, Todd will give him that, but Todd feels the pull of something to do with this guy, something telling him to follow, find out, and this feels like one of Dirk’s infamous hunches.

Still, Todd dutifully follows until the small-ish guy in the red and black polka dot t-shirt barrels into a taller, older guy with hair hanging down to his shoulders and climbs onto his back.

The blue light that he'd been seemingly pulling out of a brunette girl in the crowd must have been a trick of the light, must have been something other than real. Todd shakes off the feeling of curiosity that clings to this guy, and turns to go back to wherever he was before Dirk abandoned him for the drink table.

That's when he stops dead, staring.

Because, again, it's got to be a trick of the light, _something other than real_ , because Amanda Brotzman is dead, so she should not be standing against the wall, staring at him as if she's staring right through him.

He's got to be hallucinating. Hadn't the doctors said he could suffer hallucinations, or, in stressful situations, actual attacks here? Hadn't they said it was a gamble for him?

Todd rubs his eyes, and blinks rapidly, at the floor, before looking back up. The place on the wall she was leaning against is empty. A quick survey over the rest of the nearby crowd reveals her to be vanished.

Definitely a hallucination, then.

Todd swallows, and he feels his hands shake.

This isn't good.

The music is starting to hurt his ears, the flashing lights too much for his eyes.

He can't be here, right now.

Todd pushes through the crowd to escape the growing pressure against his temples.

That's the way his attacks used to announce themselves, in the early stages. These days, they come when they want. Maybe they're muted here? Todd hopes there's a way to prevent it. He gets to the stairwell leading downstairs and then he hears Dirk calling his name. He cut turn back. He needs to stop this.

Todd can't count the amount of times he almost falls down the stairs. Even after he's out in the fresh, cooling air, the ache of his head is growing, persistently.

Amanda is dead. She never got the chance to go full time. The system wasn't ready. She was long dead before it was even an option. She's not here. She can't be here.

He's hallucinating.

(How fitting that it’s his sister, haunting him, ridiculing him for promising to stay when she never could. He owes this to her. He owes her this much.)

“Todd!”

Then again.

“Todd, why did you run? Are you alright?” Dirk appears at his side, holding two cups of lukewarm beer, some having sloshed down onto the sleeve of his jacket. He doesn't seem all that fussed.

Todd can't focus. The attack may not be coming on fast, but it is coming.

“You look sick. What happened?” Dirk sets the two cups down on the ground and reaches up to cup Todd’s face. Todd can't help but flinch, the touch too much for his skin.

“I'm having an attack.” He breathes, pulling back from Dirk, hoping he isn’t hurting his feelings. He cannot have another trigger, it will bring it on faster.

“Attack?” Dirk looks concerned, and confused, and Todd realises he has never really told him what it is that’s killing him. Now is as good a time as any.

“A Pararibulitis attack. It's the disease that's killing me. It gives me hallucinations of intense pain that I can't get rid of, and it can be triggered by anything.” Dirk looks horrified at the thought, and reaches forward to do who knows what, something comforting, but thinks better of it. Realisation dawns on his face.

“Why did you let me take you here?” He asks, looking panicked. He wants, more than anything to assure Dirk that there is nothing he did that could have caused it. That’s it’s random.

“It's never happened here before. It's not _supposed_ to happen here.” He replies, and realises what has to be happening. “I must be having an attack in the hospital.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Dirk’s eyebrows are drawn quite severely over his eyes, worried, and Todd thinks this is how he must have looked, seeing Dirk looking ill from the first time.

This is the first time he has appeared as anything other than perfectly healthy in front of Dirk. He wishes that could continue.

“No. I just have to hope one of my nurses has noticed.” Todd squeezes his eyes shut and doubles over. There's pain all over this body, and Todd can't tell what’s supposed to be terrorising him. Perhaps Amanda is. Perhaps he's feeling pain all over him because losing her felt like dying, and seeing her here feels too good to be true, too wrong, because that's not how it all ended. Maybe she triggered the attack. Maybe the attack triggered her.

She's dead, though. And he isn't, yet.

“I can't stay.”

Dirk looks panicked, at this. “Todd, you told me that last time you forced yourself out of the session you had an attack!”

“But if I stay here, I have less of a chance of notifying someone of the attack. It’s safer-“

“Todd, what happened, what triggered it?”

“My sister.”

“You have a sister?”

“I used to. She’s been dead for nearing on six years now. She died of Pararibulitis, the family disease, it’s like an inheritance, but deadly. She never got the chance-“ He sobs, and pain wracks his body.

“Is that why you aren’t staying?”

“It’s why I _wasn’t_ staying. I promised you forever, remember? I promised it here. I keep my promises. I’m going to come back.” He risks touching Dirk one last time, in case he fucks it all up. He cups Dirk’s jaw. “I want to come back. I’m going to come back.”

He quickly touches his lips to Dirk’s, and forces himself out of the program. When he opens his eyes in the Physical World, he finds that his skin his peeling off his flesh, ever so slowly, and he screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, again, for reading. The nextbchaoter will be out as soon as we can manage, and we promise all the loose ends will be wrapped up. If you have any questions, would like to scream at us for any reason at all, or would like to say something in particular, please do no the hesitate to leave a comment, and if you haven't already left a kudos, please do.
> 
> Hit us up on Tumblr @nose-coffee and @cake-snake. Thank you.


	3. when the sky is starless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lull in the conversation, when Bart sucks in a deep breath and says, without looking at him, “What’re the stars like, there?”
> 
> Todd pauses, staring at her with furrowed eyebrows. It seems inconsequential, but she wants to know, so he answers accordingly. “They're nice. I mean, a lot of attention was obviously paid to them, considering how accurate they are, and you can see all of them, even though it's really bright there, so that's cool.” He Goes Fish. “Why?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the last instalment of this fic! We’re so pleased with the reception it’s been getting, and want to thank all the readers. You guys are awesome.
> 
> Chapter title, again, is from Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.

_i can't breathe -_

~

**San Junipero**

It’s hard to be happy for others when he is not happy for himself. Of course he is happy for Tina and Farah, but only in the barest way. He hates to watch them happy, and so in love, is all, because he thinks, with every Saturday that passes by, that that should be Todd and him.

Todd has been away for so many Saturdays, and the more he misses him, and wonders, wonders, _wonders-_

Nothing good can come of wondering, but it’s all he can do.

He wonders if Todd is alright.

If he is too weak to visit.

If they weren’t able to save him.

If the weren’t able to upload him.

If he is long dead and buried, and Dirk will never know for certain.

It weighs on hims, and he feels more and more every day like he’s stepped off the edge of a pier into deep water, and he is sinking, drowning while everyone stands above him and watches.

It has been six weeks since he last saw Todd, as ill, as pained, as awfully affected as he had been, and he has had quite enough of watching Tina and Farah sit far enough apart to not upset him, and struggle not to reach towards each other, and laugh, among a great deal of other things they had been resisting.

He goes, not to Wendimoor this time, to another nightclub, a little closer to the center of the town, called Panic Pete.

The name makes him curious, and the vibe in the air inside even more so. There is something so eerie, so dreamy and beautiful about the way everything moves in the room, almost as though it is in slow motion.

Unlike Wendimoor, everything is tidy, even stylish. Set up like an old bohemian nightclub, like something out of a movie set in turn of the century Paris. It’s a nice change from the outside which feels dated, but in a different way, merely familiar. In here, feels dreamy, hazy, beautiful in a distant way. Not familiar in the same sense of the town, just vaguely familiar in that he thinks he’s seen it in a dream or a film.

Everybody in here has changed their clothes to fit with the scenery, all La Belle Époque, bohemian, beautiful and strange.

He’s going to look strange if he doesn’t as well.

So, he closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he is in an era appropriate dinner suit. He proceeds into the club, walking past people maybe taking it too far with the pipe smoking, and the Absinthe, but really, who is he to judge?

He’s the one who came in here to get some kind of emotional… something.

“Are you going to stand and watch, or are you going to engage?” Asks someone behind him.

He turns, and a woman stands straight, but remarkably short, with dark hair and striking blue eyes. “Ah, hello. I'm Dirk Gently.” He says.

“I am Mona Wilder, I own this club. Are you going to partake, or is this a spectator sport?” She circles him curiously.

“I’m, kind of just looking for the moment, but I might, um, as you put it, _partake_ at a later date.” Dirk responds, frowning as she continues to circle.

“What are you looking for?” Is her answer. She looks quite elegant in her off-white and blue dress, very in her own element, and Dirk ponders at her question.

“Distraction?” He suggests, but he's not quite that invested.

Mona gives him a nod. “Follow me.” Further inside, there are card tables, and a string quartet playing soft, slow music to dance to. There's a bar set into the wall, and many sheltered alcoves with booths and tables.

Mona leads him over to the bar, and instead of going behind it and acting as he expects Farah would, she gestures for him to sit down next to her, on a cushioned bar stool. “What would you like to drink?” She asks Dirk in her soft, wavering voice.

“Do you have anything here that tastes like gummy bears?” Dirk replies.

Mona covers her mouth when she laughs. “No, but we have sweet champagne, which is bubbly.”

He nods. “I'll have that, then.” Mona gestures to the bartender and he nods to her. Dirk bites at the inside of his cheek and looks around the lamp lit room. It's very different to the punk rock rave of Wendimoor and the soothing 80’s bar vibe of the Ridgely. “Can I inquire into the origin of your club name. It doesn't seem to match the air of the venue, itself.”

She smiles. “It’s the name of this little rubber doll, you squeeze it and it’s eyes pop out. It’s supposed to reduce stress. I was one for many years, rubber lasts a long time.”

“Sorry, you _were_ a rubber doll?”

She smiles and nods happily. “Yes. Though it does not compare to the six or so years in which I was a chair. I nearly called this place ‘La Chaise’ because of it. But I thought Panic Pete was more avant garde.”

Did resolves not to question it. The bartender sets flutes of bubbling champagne next to them, and he looks up. “Pardon my questioning, but I couldn’t help feeling- all of the other places in town hold more recent aspects of nostalgia to them, but this place is-“

“Older? Yes. It’s designed after the place I grew up, in Montmartre during La Belle Époque. Some of the bohemian design slipped in, but that’s to be expected, I was hoping to draw people in. More often than not, it’s the novelty of spending an evening like this. For me, it is a return to a simpler time, quite literally to La Belle Époque - the beautiful time.”

“You were born during this period?” Dirk asks.

“Yes.” She replies. “I managed to prolong my life by staying less perishable objects for longer. It really was beautiful.” She gestures around her. “My mother was a great lover of the great masters, especially in the Renaissance period. So, she named me after the Da Vinci. I grew up tugging on trouser legs at card tables like these, in rooms too full of smoke,

“It was when soldiers marched on France that I discovered my ability. We had to hide, they wanted our house for- I forget- and I became a household object, just by willing myself to be. It was then I decided I wanted to be an actress. After all, I could be _so_ committed to the part.”

“So this place is your own personal piece of nostalgia?”

She nods. “La Belle Époque, recreated in all its glory, just for me and anyone who has watched Titanic too many times.” She bends her finger and he leans in accordingly. “I have a room for members in the back where I have it playing on a loop.”

He laughs at the absurdity of that. “So if you could preserve your life indefinitely, how did you end up here?”

Her smile turns bittersweet. “Anything, when given time, can catch up to you, no matter how fast you run. Old age is inescapable, even if I thought it wasn’t.” She takes a sip from her glass, and Dirk watches the bubbles floating upwards, change with the angle of the glass with awed silence.

He takes a sip from his own glass and finds himself significantly less entranced.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mona, but that is _awful_.”

She laughs, in the most unnatural way, though it sounds the way she looks, charming and strange, and altogether striking. “I will find you something that tastes like gummy bears.”

~

_i’m drowning -_

~

**The Physical World**

He’s living in the dark. He has been living in the dark since he left San Junipero.

There is less time between attacks now, and he is tired, so tired of the pain. So tired of the shock of the pain, so tired of the constant beep at his side, so tired of everything. He is tired of the dark.

He misses the warm, bright beach, the world where Dirk now resides. He misses Dirk.

He doesn’t know how long it has been since he forced himself out of the system. He came to consciousness for a short while after it, and understood only half of what Silas told him. (Words like _Hemorrhaging_ and _Brain Damage_ circle in his mind, and Todd has yet to understand where they fit.)

Since the, He has been on a steady dose of heavy pain medication that keep him just conscious, but unaware of the world around him.

They seem to have developed a way to predict the attacks, because now he doesn’t have to scream, the moment he sees anything, someone comes in and adds something to one of the many IVs he is attached to.

The curtains are always drawn, nobody risks touching him outside of vital checks, barely anyone speaks in his room anymore.

But the attacks keep coming, untriggered, unwarranted, unwanted. And with increasing regularity.

Todd knows the end is coming.

And he cannot come to his bearings enough to tell someone, _anyone_ , that he has changed his mind.

It’s lonely. It’s awful.

He wonders if the terror he feels in the face of his own impending mortality is anything like the fear Amanda felt as she was held down nearly six years ago, to try and keep her still enough to try and save her life.

He hopes his little sister never felt fear like this.

He knows though, that she did.

He knows she was terrified when she died.

And that is what he’s scared of.

~

_i'm sinking -_

~

**San Junipero**

There is a pull. There hasn’t been a pull since Todd was here. This is new.

He wonders if he should resist it in order to spite the universe for taking Todd away, perhaps forever. But there is something about the pull that tells him that it will secure Todd’s place here.

So he follows it. The pull that brings him right back to where all of his pain started. He walks, it feels like the pull has him on a short leash, ur the more he walks, the more he wishes he drove.

He walks from the Ridgley. Leisurely through the night, past Panic Pete, past endless drunk people, who he sees past the façades of. They may appear joyful. Grinning, shouting, laughing, tossing their heads back in joy.

But Dirk sees the fear in their eyes. Not all of them. He thinks the ones who look fearful are the Part-Timers. They must be. Because the ones with looks that say they are slightly unaware, distracted, pained, they must be new Full-Timers.

He supposes it’s what conscious death must do to people. He had been ready for death for years before he got it. Some of these people got it by surprise, or maybe got a short lead up, or maybe it was traumatic. He understands that despite the pain of it, for the years he lay unconscious but aware, he was one of the lucky ones, for whom death was a welcome release.

So he passes countless drunk, high, otherwise affected people, for whom he can tell, this seemed like an obligation.

And he hates that his refuge is a prison for so many others.

On he walks, past the town center, past shopping malls, and signs advertising the most amazing experiences, and up the hill he knows leads to the cliff edge that stands over the never ending beach of San Junipero.

He knows where he is being lead. Back to where all of this pain and heartbreak started, to where he lost Todd.

Back to Wendimoor.

~

_help me -_

~

**The Physical World**

There's a bright spot, for a second. He hears his doctors talking about how it's only a matter of time now. That patients who die slowly often have a sudden will to live right before.

They give him a week. Todd pretends he doesn't hear.

Silas acts cheerful, opening the curtains when Todd asks, because Todd says he can deal with it. Todd can still see the sadness behind his eyes. Panto is the same, but more visibly so, as if all the pity that must have been buried deep in him is suddenly rising to the surface.

Bart doesn't say much, anymore. She eats her meals with him, holds his hand when he feels it's okay to. She once gets away with sleeping in his room.

Todd doesn't want to think of it. Saturday is fast approaching and he feels well enough to go to San Junipero.

He catches Silas after Silas has done his early morning checkups. “I want to go full time.” He says.

Silas gives him a surprised look. Todd can understand why, especially after all the bitterness and resignation from when he was first here. He had made it clear he just wanted to die, and nothing more. Silas appears to run this over in his head. “Are you sure?”

Todd nods as vigorously as he can without hurting himself. “I am. I’ve had a lot of time to think it over, and I am sure I want to go full time.”

Silas still doesn't look convinced. “Todd, the doctors thought something like this might happen. I'm sorry that I don't quite believe you, but they said you'd probably try to make a hard decision or something in this time.”

“That doesn't change this, Silas. I mean it. I’ve been thinking it over for weeks.”

He doesn't have any kind of response for that. He just nods, mutely, looking conflicted and leaves Todd.

When Panto brings in his breakfast, he tells Todd what Silas said he'd told him. He tells Todd that they're talking it over, very seriously. He asks Todd if he wants to visit tonight, and Todd says yes so quickly that Panto laughs.

And then Bart arrives for the morning, holding some kind of playing cards, and suggesting they play Go Fish, because it's more interactive than Snap and less likely to scare Todd into an attack. Todd talks the whole time about what he's going to do when he goes back.

Bart remains politely quiet, only interjecting with small, ‘oh’s and ‘cool’s.

There's a lull in the conversation, when Bart sucks in a deep breath and says, without looking at him, “What’re the stars like, there?”

Todd pauses, staring at her with furrowed eyebrows. It seems inconsequential, but she wants to know, so he answers accordingly. “They're nice. I mean, a lot of attention was obviously paid to them, considering how accurate they are, and you can see all of them, even though it's really bright there, so that's cool.” He Goes Fish. “Why?”

Bart sighs. She's never really looked this sad before. “Because Ken said they'd be perfect.”

Todd feels bewildered. Ken? “Uh,” he says. “Who's Ken?”

She doesn't respond immediately, asking him, instead if he has any sixes. She Goes Fish. “Ken was my best friend, in the whole world. Somethin’ you prob’ly don't know about me is that before Dirk and I got in a car crash and my legs got fucked up, I used to be an assassin. Dirk used ta call me a Holistic Assassin because my targets were always people that I saw who I ‘ad the urge ta kill. The universe got me ta do it's dirty work for it or whatever. Anyway, that's how I met Ken. I almost killed ‘im, but I never got the urge so I didn't, and we became friends.”

“That's an interesting way of making friends.”

“Ken was a computers guy. He was good with tech and shit. A little ways into our friendship, he realised how scared he was of losin’ me and decided ta make a place for me or him ta go when we died so we never had to really move on. It didn't have a name back then. He told me it'd be perfect; the stars, the sky, the sea. Everythin’.”

“He made San Junipero?”

“Yeah. He hired help, got it runnin’, and decided he wanted ta have a test run. He came to a hospital - _this_ hospital - and asked for volunteers. There were five of ‘em. These four guys and a girl. Ken liked her best. She was always real nice like about all of it. Can't remember her name. Alison or Amy or somethin’.”

“Amanda?”

“Yeah, that's her.”

“That was my sister.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

“Everythin’ was goin’ so well, and they were gettin’ ready to upgrade the equipment, get the five volunteers ready for goin’ full time, should they want ta. An’ then Amanda died. Ken kinda went off the deep end. The whole deal became publicised, more fundin’, more press, and the program was almost ready for public consumption.”

“So what happened?”

“He got hit by a car. There was no way they coulda saved him. He was killed on impact. They perfected the system without him, releasin’ it, and that leads us to now.”

“So, he's not there.”

“No. The whole reason he created the place, ta make sure we never felt alone, ta keep us together, down the drain ‘cause some _dick_ decided to speed across a pedestrian crossin’.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“It's not like you were drivin’ the car. That's why I didn't come ta watch your weddin’. I'll go to San Junipero when I die, and no sooner.”

“That's fair.” A pause. “Do you have any aces?”

“Fuck you, Brotzman.” She replies, handing over a card.

~

_can anybody hear me-?_

~

**San Junipero**

The Glitch is waiting, though for what it does not know.

It cannot be waiting for the stranger, the one who accompanied the melancholy one so long ago. It is too soon for that. There is a heaviness that hangs in the air, making it feel humid where there is no overbearing heat.

This place, Wendimoor, it is a bit more empty than usual, and the four men who scour the place for scraps, the men who smoke and drink and howl, they frown and sulk.

They are all waiting. The place commands them to.

And someone walks through the door.

He is a bit more underdressed than last time, no jacket, his sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened, hair messy. He peers around the room for something. The Glitch knows he is looking for it. It cannot deny him.

It steps out of the corner, immediately drawing the melancholy one’s attention. The assuredness in the set of its shoulders makes him more determined.

“You’re looking for something.” It says, in a voice they haven't had a need to use for a while.

“I am. I think I’ve found it.” He replies, looking at it, cocking his head, looking it up and down, as though trying to put a puzzle together. “What are you?”

It shrugs. “I’m the Glitch. The piece of San Junipero that was never meant to be.”

“You’re… different for everything else here.”

It nods. “They didn’t mean to make me. I am an accident.”

“You look familiar.”

The Glitch smiles. “People see what they want to see when they look at me.” It glances around the place. “They see who they want me to be.”

“What does that mean?”

The Glitch allows itself to shift. Through into the different forms people have asked it to assume since its creation. The man with glasses and grey hair (the man who had asked called it “Zim” the whole time) the girl with brown hair and a fringe and neon green nails (that one was unexpected), the woman with plaited dirty blonde hair and the three star tattoos by her right eye (she used to be here so often, it felt natural), the woman with pink hair and a cowboy hat (for a man with the same pink hair who was so obviously not dying), and the blonde man with a sharp jawline (that was funny, because it was that same man who asked it to shift that way).

Once back in its normal form, it peers at the melancholy one, who now seems mesmerised. “You seek to see someone, I think.”

Its hair grows orange, its eyes blue, its face lined but kind. He looks as though he has been struck. “Please,” the melancholy one chokes out. “That hurts.”

It dutifully shifts back to its normal form. “I wasn't hurting you.”

“It’s a different kind of hurt.” He rubs his face until he looks composed, once again. “Why are you here?”

“They made a mistake. And now I am trapped with no escape.” It scratches it's arm, though there is no itch. Lights flash over both of their faces. He is sad. He is searching for an answer that the Glitch cannot supply. “I don't think they even know I'm here.”

“Why stay?”

“Where would I go? There is no way out, not for any of us, and there is nowhere else here to feel just right.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“An answer. A reminder. A resolution. I don't expect them.”

This does anything but satisfy the melancholy one. He seems agitated and confused. Like he hasn't answered any questions, simply collected more pressing questions.

He leaves as quickly as he came, stumbling down the stairs as if he didn't see them, there.

One of the four men who scour the place for a snack comes over to the Glitch, the taller one with white hair and glasses, leans against the wall beside it. He says nothing. It has no response ready for if he ever does. The lights flit over them both like hummingbirds intent on blinding them. The Glitch pretends to hear the music instead of everything happening outside this buildings four walls.

~

_someone, please, save me -_

~

**The Physical World**

The appearance of his parents is not quite as surprising as he thinks they expected it to be. He supposes they thought he'd cower in his bed, let them shout him down.

That's not what they're greeted with. They're greeted with Bart sitting on the end of his bed (courtesy of Panto) playing Blackjack on the table between them. Todd swears she's cheating, they're playing for chocolate coins, and that's fine with Todd because he doesn't think he could stomach them right now.

His parents sweep in with the air of importance he used to respect, and, at times, fear, but now just annoys him. Bart looks up and frowns at them. They look a bit shocked to see her.

“Bartine?” His mother asks.

Now that Todd knows that Bart and Ken knew Amanda well before she died, it's not that shocking to him that his parents know her. “Oh, hi Mrs. Brotzman. Long time, no see.”

“Mom, dad, what are you doing here?”

His mother fixes him with a look that he knows would have frozen him where he sits only six months ago, no longer. “You know why we’re here, Todd.”

“You’re right. I do know. But I don’t really have time for it. I can’t risk an attack in the next two hours, it might prevent me from visiting-“

“For god's sake, Todd!” His father isn’t necessarily loud, but forceful, maybe. Angry, definitely. “When are you going to give all of this up, and accept it? This is stupid. You’re endangering yourself, shortening your life, and for what? For a- a beach, and fast cars, and bars, and-“

“And _love_ , dad. And friendship. For the first time in years, I have friends, and I’m smiling, and laughing, and I’m happy. Can’t you be glad for me?”

Bart looks like she’s trapped between a rock and a hard place, it reminds Todd of childhood, of all the fights his friends would get in with their parents while he was over at their houses. He sees the same shoulder dropping and tuning out in her.

“I want to be. You know I do. We just want you to be happy. But we also want you alive.” His father's voice is softer now, kinder. But he hears the message. They want him happy, in a way that will make them happy.

He smiles. “I’m dying already. They’re not giving me more than a week. Out here, I have you guys, and Bart, and Panto. And Silas. It’s good. It’s more than I ever thought I would get. But there, San Junipero, that place that you guys seem to hate for no good reason, I have Tina and Farah and Dirk, who, if you've forgotten, is my husband.”

“You married him to euthanise him!” His father protests, looking incredibly upset at the thought. He knows his parent are against the whole practise, but it’s not either of them dying. He doesn’t think they get to have an opinion on the matter.

“And I _love_ him!” He tells him, desperate for them both to know that there was more behind the act. “I wanted him to be happy and being kept in a coma he would never wake up from was not making him happy!”

“You don't know him!” His mother interjects, and she is already crying, although he’s pleased to see that she isn’t in hysterics, sobbing, yet.

“I do! I've spent so much time with him in San Junipero-”

“Enough with that place!” She yells back, and he knows now, she has raised her voice, despite how careful she always is around him, that she is serious, that there is more behind that statement than meets the eye. There is deeper meaning in their hatred of San Junipero.

“Why do you hate it so much?” He demands.

“Because they couldn't save your sister!” His mother sobs.

Todd stops short. Of course he knew they'd tried to save her. When she was heaving and gasping on the bed, eyes wide but unseeing. They'd put the little white dot on her temple, willing the system to take her, even though it wasn't ready. They tried so hard to stop the attack. Todd had to hold his mother back from rushing to Amanda’s bedside. He never knew, however, that they held such a grudge.

They both knew it was too much to ask, that the system that wouldn't be ready for another few months take their daughter so they could one day see her again. Todd never knew they were still so angry.

“So,” he says softly, “because they couldn't save Amanda, I shouldn't be allowed to have what she couldn't, because you're _spiteful_?”

His mother goes pale. Neither of them can choke up any kind of response.

He shakes his head. “Get out.” If he could allow himself to feel anything, right now, Todd is sure he'd be filled with disgust. “You had enough control over the rest of my life. Let me keep my dignity in death.”

Both of them leave without so much as a backward glance. Bart looks up, expression conflicted. She looks awkward, as if she just overheard something she didn't want to.

“So, I know it’s rude, but your parents are assholes.” She says.

He can’t help but laugh. “I think they think they’re being caring.”

“They don’ do a very good job of it.” She remarks.

“They’ve never been very good at it. They got worse after Amanda.”

“Yeah, tha’s gotta weigh on ya mind.”

“It did. It does, I’m just starting to realise that her death doesn’t have to have an effect on mine.”

~

_you're so close -_

~

**San Junipero**

It takes him a long time to walk back home. To the house he materialised inside of after he was uploaded. It’s all furnished. Not necessarily stylishly, but it’s cozy, and it feels like home. Another thing about it, that he noticed almost straight away that it wasn’t just furnished for him, but also for Todd.

Which at first was thrilling. Knowing the system is waiting for Todd to join him, that they will live here, together, domestic and sweet, and _oh_ how he wonders what it might be like to share a bed with him.

And now, all of Todd things are a sad reminder of all he might already have lost.

There are knick knacks, little things that have to be Todd’s. A shirt that seems to bear the name of a little known band, a guitar and a keyboard in a corner, photos. He looks through all of the little trinkets, beautiful little reminders of the man he wishes was with him, here, now.

And, of course, it’s the last piece of the puzzle. Of course it is. He holds the photograph gently, carefully. Todd is going to want this.

“Oh. _Did it…_ ”

~

_find me -_

~

**San Junipero, Visiting Day**

He appears on the beach, and this is the tiredest he has ever felt here. He wants to lie in the warm sand and just sleep here where the pain doesn’t exist anymore. But he has a job to do here. Make sure Dirk knows he’s alive, make sure he knows that next time he sees him, it will be for the forever he promised.

That it’s arranged, that he’s going to keep his promise.

Of course, all that he has to do now is find Dirk, among the rabble of everyone else visiting. It won’t be easy, but he will make it, if it takes him the whole seven hours he is here.

And of course, because it’s Dirk, he has no opportunity to look for him at all.

The beautiful, familiar voice comes from behind him, waking him out of his fatigue. “Todd?”

He sighs. “Dirk?” He turns, and Dirk stands on the steps of a beach house that he does not remember existing on this stretch of beach. He doesn’t look any different than the way he remembers seeing him. He wonders if he looks different.

Dirk smiles, like his own personal ray of sun, and runs down the stairs to the porch. He’s holding something, but it seems inconsequential as his arms wrap around him, and he is warm and and it feels more like home than anything he has experienced since his sister-

He will not think about that now, not with Dirk _right here_. He wraps his arms around Dirk, pulling him closer still, taking in the love in the simple embrace. “I’ve missed you.” He whispers.

“I missed you too, oh Todd, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” Dirk whispers back, and squeezes him, and presses a kiss into his hair. He can’t help but burrow into Dirk’s chest. “I thought maybe you had died and they couldn't get to you fast enough. I had no way of knowing.”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I never would have left if I could've.” He pulls away. “I have to tell you something. It's important.”

“No, me first.” Dirk turns around what Todd now sees is a picture frame, and the picture is of Amanda. Todd feels sick. He hasn't seen her in ages. That's the picture that sat in his apartment until he was moved, permanently into the hospital and all his stuff was packed up to go into storage.

Todd reaches out and takes the picture from Dirk. He looks up at him. “How did you get this?”

Dirk shrugs, “It was in our house- the beach house.” He gestures to the house behind him, and Todd would be jumping for joy in any other circumstance. But he is holding a picture of Amanda. He’s going to say something about his sister, and he thinks it’s important, and Todd’s very soul is frozen to the core with the reminder of her. “That's Amanda, right? Your sister?”

“Yes.” He replies stiffly, fingers brushing over the glass like he could brush the hair from her eyes through it.

“Todd. _Todd_.” Dirk holds him by his shoulders, shaking him gently, and he seems excited. “I've seen her!”

Todd’s stomach drops, and he feels sick, because this is a sick, _sick_ joke that Dirk is playing. Something in him whispers that he has seen her too. That Dirk isn’t playing a prank. That this is reality.

He presses that hope way down deep, and shakes his head vigorously. “You can't have. She died six years ago. It wasn’t until months, almost a _year_ , afterwards that they perfected the system.”

“You're not getting it. Here - come with me.”

Todd is still holding the picture as Dirk drags him up to the road and gets him into the blue Corvette that he's hasn't gotten rid of, for some reason. He has no idea what Dirk is doing. He has no idea what this means. Dirk can't have seen her here, just as Todd couldn't have seen her here.

Neither of them say anything on the drive. Dirk drives just as a fast as always, which used to scare Todd, but is now just the norm. It seems the accident that led to him being here has absolutely no bearing on his method. Todd would be inspired if he wasn't so confused.

He isn't here for this. He came here to tell Dirk that he's going to stay, but now, with everything happening, with everything going on, no words come out of his mouth.

Dirk parks in front of Wendimoor, and it's much too early to be booming, much too early for there to be a rave as substantial as last time they were here, but Todd can hear the music even from where they're parked. He leaves the picture of his sister, only twenty in the photo, on his seat as he gets out.

“Dirk, I never really saw her here. It was a hallucination.”

Dirk shakes his head and leads Todd inside, up the stairs. There's a relatively large crowd, already, with the same four guys circling like sharks, casting cautious looks at Dirk. “It was real, Todd. And I can prove it.” He responds, as they step out of the stairwell.

Todd sighs, wondering where this is going. Dirk looks around, and then makes a pleased noise, dragging Todd along behind him.

He stops near the wall. And there, standing against the gritty bricks, staring at her neon green nails, is his sister. She looks up when she feels eyes on her. She looks at Todd as if he's familiar to her, but not as if he's the brother she left behind. Todd's still not sure it isn't another hallucination, just well-timed.

Dirk looks excitedly between them.

Todd can't help but breathe out, unsteadily. “Amanda?”

Something changes.

The heaviness in the air lifts, the music isn't so overbearing, the lights barely even flash over his eyes. Amanda’s eyes widen, her mouth slightly agape.

“Oh,” she says, and blinks as if she's waking up from a dream. She stares at her hands, turning them over, and then back up at them. “That _is_ my name, isn't it?”

Dirk releases Todd and does a little happy dance beside him, murmuring to himself, “Did it! Did it!”

Todd can only shake his head. “But you're dead.” He says. “I watched you die. The tech didn't work. You were gone.”

Amanda says nothing, just rushes forward and tugs him into her arms. It's so warm and solid and sudden that he can't dismiss her, anymore. She's really there. Todd forgets anything else. He hugs her back as hard as he can, feeling tears in his eyes, words he regretted never saying to her on his tongue.

She's here. After all this time, she was just here, waiting for him to find her.

Amanda made it to San Junipero.

~

_Save me._

~

“How did you get here?” He asks, his voice broken, and small, and so vulnerable, and she wants so much to bring her big brother closer to her, comfort him.

But he’s pulled her away, eyes searching her face like he’ll never see her again.

She remembers now. The pain. She was drowning. She was _sinking. She was-_

She shakes herself out of it. “This isn’t a conversation to have where you can barely hear yourself.” She tells him, and he nods solemnly, they start moving towards an exit.

“Hey, Glitch!” Yells Gripps, she turns her head in his direction and smiles. “You alright?”

She nods to him. “You’ll know when I’m not, Gripps, you know you will.”

They leave the melancholy one behind, she still hasn’t learned his name, but she knows that he is important to her brother in a way she has yet to understand. Instead of travelling as she usually would, through the code, the walls behind the scenes, she leads Todd down the stairs, and down the little set of crude steps that had been carved into the rock face of the cliff many, many years ago, down onto that never ending stretch of beach.

He walks slowly behind her as she finds the spot she needs to be in to explain to him what happened, as she understands it.

She shouldn’t recognise the spot she washed up on, almost six years ago. But she does. She remembers lying there for hours, wondering when the hope and adrenaline would wear off, and she’d be left in the dark again. It never did.

“I remember the hospital room.” She starts. “Our mother, screaming, and our father leaving, knowing he would have to watch me die if he stayed. And I remember you holding our mom, like you could make all of it go away.

She turns her eyes toward the water, smiling out at it, like it’s an old friend she has come to greet.

“But I also remember the drowning, I was sinking into deep water, flailing, reaching for the surface, trying to get a decent breath in my lungs. I felt water in my lungs. I felt my limbs go cold and numb, and I felt my body give out, give up. It was like I was weighed down, there was no way of getting back to the surface.

“The next thing I knew, I was rising to the surface of a vast body of water, and gasping for breath. I thought I had survived the attack, redirected it or something. I thought that if I found land, and stayed calm for long enough, I would come out of the hallucination. That I’d be fine. I laid on the beach, feeling half drowned for a full day and night before I realised that this was my new reality.

“I figured out pretty quickly that it was San Junipero. After all, I was one of the first five testers. At that point, it was pretty lonely. The servers were only meant for a few people at a time, not like they are now. So I was alone, in an empty town, still not quite sure of how I got there.

“After that, the Rowdies showed up-“

Todd, who had, up until now been silent, listening attentively, interrupts. “The Rowdies?”

“The four guys in there. They were the other testers. They call themselves The Rowdy Three.”

“There are four of them.” He points out, and she smiles.

“Vogel joined a bit after the other boys. They kept the name. They arrived a few months after me, and by that point I was a little stir crazy. I forgot my name. I was the girl San Junipero and time forgot. But, because of the frankly traumatic way I was uploaded, I got this funky ability, I was just able to blend in, become any face that was described to me, or shown to me. So people started coming, and I became a sort of fly on the wall, I learned all sorts of peoples little secrets, their struggles. I found good people for the boys to feed on - they feed on neurological energy, generally people in distress - people who wouldn’t miss all of the pain and heartbreak the boys were taking.

“I forgot who I was, outside of The Glitch.”

“They don’t know you’re in here.” He tells her, looking distracted. He’s talking about the doctors. The people tending to San Junipero. Her parents.

“I know.”

“Our parents.” He sounds pained.

“I _know_.”

His eyes fill with tears. “I thought you were gone forever. They think you are- they, ‘Manda, they, we, we feel so guilty.”

She snorts. “I’m glad you feel guilty about what you did.”

He shakes his head. “I regret it every day. I don’t understand how I could ever have thought it was a good idea to _fake_ this illness-“

“Good. Why are you here?” She asks. She isn’t trying to be scathing in judgement, but it just doesn’t make sense to her, why he’s here. This place is for the dead and dying, and as far as she knows, her brother is neither.

He shakes his head. “Karma.” He replies. “I got Pararibulitis.”

Her heart drops to her stomach. And funnily enough, it’s not him who she’s worried about. Dying is easy, she knows that, though her death was not smooth sailing, living is harder. Her parents will have two dead children in very short order. Not just one, a defective one and the spare who survived.

Her mother will feel so guilty, passing the disease on, knowing what she did when she had them, and ignoring good sense. Her father will likely withdraw into himself further. Her parents will live to bury both of their children.

“ _No_.” She breathes. “That’s not funny, Todd.”

“No one’s laughing.” He replies plainly.

She pauses as she considers her response, trying desperately to be sensitive, but just so angry at the universe that decided this was okay.

“How long do you have?”

“A week if I’m lucky.”

“And if you’re not?” They both elect to ignore her voice breaking in the middle of that sentence.

“Then the moments after I leave here will be my last lucid ones. And I’ll just have to hope our parents don’t override my final wishes.”

“What? What does that mean?”

His face falls further. “After you, they had a huge mistrust of the San Junipero system. I did the sample package, told them, despite the fact that they were adamant I shouldn’t commit myself to it, that I would do just as much as you did. They were going to have me die in order to be fair to your memory. I was gonna do it.”

She pretends that that doesn’t hurt, that he brother has been made to feel so guilty about her blameless death that he felt the decision wasn’t his to make. “What changed?”

And there it is, a beautiful, purely joyful smile on her brother’s face. “I met Dirk, the guy who brought me to you. We’re married, ‘Manda, he got me to go bungee jumping, and skinny dipping, he got me doing things I haven’t done since high school. He made me feel _alive_.”

“He’s-“

“He’s dead. I married him, in part, to have the right to take him off life support. He was in a coma for eight years, and they were just going to keep him going, though the likelihood of him waking up was, like, below ten percent.” He clears his throat, and wipes his eyes. “You’ll like him, I think, he’s a great guy.”

“Any guy who can make my emo brother smile like that has to be.”

There is silence, hanging between them, waiting tensely to be broken. The Brotzman siblings are notorious for breaking things, and Amanda wonders which of them will have the honour of breaking this. She makes the executive decision that it should be her.

“It’s not fair,” she says to him, “that they want to keep you from here. Even if I wasn’t here. It's not fair. You may be an asshole, and you may have faked an illness that has killed and is killing us, but you don’t deserve to have decisions about your own death made up for you. And you had better make sure you deserve every good thing Dirk brings into your life.”

“I’m gonna try. You know, I love you.” He tells her. “And I missed you more than anything.”

She smiles. “I missed you too, asshole.”

~

They make their way back up to the warehouse when the sun has fully set, finally running out of things to say, all apologies repeated too many times, the tide coming in, licking at their ankles.

The party at Wendimoor is in full swing when they arrive, and though they search for Dirk, Todd desperate to introduce his husband to Amanda, he can't be found.

Eventually the guy who called out to her earlier in the evening crosses over and tells her in a loud voice that the ginger dude in the weird jacket left, a while ago, and hoped they had a good time.

“Shit!” Todd says.

Amanda raises an eyebrow. “What's wrong?”

He frowns and starts pushing his way to the stairwell. Amanda is close behind him, apparently unwilling to let him go without her, which he completely understands. “Dirk knew that I didn't plan to ever go full time, here, but after I married him, I decided to stay, and I've never had the chance to tell him, not properly.”

“That's unhelpful. This is a huge town. How will you find him? I mean, you've got a solid four and a bit hours left.”  
  
Todd shakes his head and begins to walk down the road. “I'm not well enough to be here for that long. My nurses and I agreed to have a shorter session today. I didn't think this would happen. I thought I'd tell Dirk that I'm gonna stay, we'd go out for drinks and I'd have a solid amount of time with him. I'm leaving in like an hour.”

“Shit, that is bad.”

“I know. And I don't even know where to start looking. He's been everywhere in this town.”

“He's full time, right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Lets check his house, then. And go from there.”

He nods, and hopes to god that Dirk is there.

~

“You left him there?” Mona asks him.

“He and Amanda need to catch up. He and I will see each other again.”

Mona purses her lips. “I am not so sure that this was your most brilliant plan, Dirk.”

He takes a sip of her weak recreation of Farah’s ‘Gently’ cocktail. “I think it should work out. Almost everything does.”

She smiles. “Never leave great love to chance.”

~

Todd can't help but be distracted by the house. It's two stories, with the second being a lofted bedroom. There's a wall of photos, and bookshelves of knickknacks, and odd, out of place things that seem to work.

There are pictures that don't belong to him - a picture of a woman with orange hair holding a small boy with the same hair on her lap, both smiling at the camera; a picture of Bart, but shorter and with a few missing teeth, flipping off the camera; a picture of Bart and a dark skinned man, her sitting on the man's desk, eating something out of a takeaway box, her foot against his head, the man laughing and closing his computer while also pushing her away; a picture of Dirk, a little younger, hair lighter, an olive coloured trench coat hanging off his skinny frame, sitting on a bench and contemplating the sheer amount of pigeons at his feet.

Todd wonders who took that last picture. (Todd wonders why both of their things seem to compliment each other. Todd wonders why the urge to live with Dirk in this house is so strong.)

Amanda looks around, going so far as to go up to the bedroom to check.

Dirk is nowhere to be found, even if his car is parked in the garage.

~

“Mona, my plans aren’t as bad as you make them out to seem.” He laughs.

“You have, in the short time I’ve known you, decided both to bleach and shave your eyebrows, both of which I had to talk you out of, and then I had to talk you out of dying your hair blue, and then I had to talk you out of thinking up a large aquarium to make up for the hole left in your heart by Todd. And so on, and so forth. You are not good at formulating plans.” She replies.

Admittedly, none of those have been his best ideas. “So, at least a quarter of the time, I am not a good independent thinker, but I had a good feeling about leaving him there with her, it will all work out.” He promises again, though he is starting to feel the opposite.

“I think you should go and find him.” Mona tells him bluntly.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. They need to catch up. He thought she was Perma-Dead.” He tells her, lowering his voice.

There is a low and uneasy feeling in his stomach, that he tries to ignore, and a pull that he knows he shouldn’t ignore. But surely it could wait until he finished his drink.

What could be the harm?

~

Visiting the Ridgley is a mistake.

Dirk is not there, and the moment Farah sees him, she vaults I've the bar and hugs him until he has serious trouble breathing. Tina calls him “Toddy-B” and they're both delighted to find that Amanda is a person that exists and even more delighted to find that she's kind of his long lost sister.

And they have no idea where Dirk is.

Which is unhelpful beyond belief.

They leave the Ridgley no closer to finding Dirk than when they entered.

~

“Dirk, I am kicking you out if you will not see reason.”

He rolls his eyes, but he knows she’s right. “Ugh, Fine. I’ll be back later, have more of that ready!” He points to his near empty glass as he makes his way to the Exit, and tried to ignore the impulsive part of him that tells him to run in the direction the pull wants to take him.

Instead, he tries to walk at a leisurely pace.

He wants to believe he has time.

He doesn’t want to think about why he might not have as much time as he thought.

~

They check the nightclub Dirk brought Todd to, months and months ago, but he isn't anywhere in the crowd. They check every bar and club he might have walked into, even the weird bohemian one that is thick with smoke and some shit, and the woman with black hair and blue eyes at the bar stares at him as though he's the missing piece to a puzzle.

Dirk is nowhere.

Todd’s time is running out.

He slumps against the wall of a building, and stares up at the sky, remembering what Bart said about the stars. “I'm not gonna be able to tell him.” Todd says.

Amanda purses her lips, folding her arms over her chest. “Then I'll tell him. You don't have to worry, I'll let him know.”

Todd gets up and throws his arms around her. “Thank you.”

She nods, pulling away. “Just make sure you get here. Don't leave me by myself again.”

~

Dirk rounds a corner, to see Amanda staring at a spot on the pavement. “Amanda! Where is Todd?”

She looks up at him with a horrified look on her face, as if he’s just broken her heart. His own heart stops. “Where is Todd?” He asks, slower this time, begging for any deity that might exist to allow Todd to be somewhere close by,

Amanda’s face falls further. “Dirk, listen-“

“Oh my god.” He brings a hand over his face, maybe to hide from Amanda exactly how much this affects him.

“No, listen, he’s running out of time. You need to listen to me.” He nods, as her hands secure themselves around his shoulders. “He’s made all of the arrangements. He has the nurses on his side. He’s coming here. Forever. It’s just a matter of time. They wouldn’t let him have a full session today, because-“ her eyes get shiny, and she coughs. “- because he’s really badly off. He’s really weak. But he’s coming back.”

She bites her lip. “He says within a week.”

It’s bittersweet. Having forever with Todd is an incredible prospect, but he knows that Todd has to die in what will probably be awful, debilitating pain first. It hurts that his happiness has to come at a price like that.

But it is a choice that has been made without his input. Not even by Todd. None of them would have chosen this for themselves if they had a chance. The universe is to blame, and sometimes Dirk really hates it.

~

**The Physical World**

Todd lies on his side, curled up under his covers. He's too tired to poke his fingers through the loose knit pattern of his blanket. All he can do is think.

There's too much to think about.

Amanda isn't gone and disappeared into forever, her consciousness survived into San Junipero, being washed up on the shore, safe and sound.

Dirk doesn't hate him for disappearing on him, again, six weeks ago, and still probably loves him, still wants him to stay forever.

Stay forever in the house on the shore, filled with their stuff.

There are negatives, too:

\- Todd never got to tell Dirk that he'd decided to stay.

\- His parents don't know about Amanda, yet, and if they're still angry at him they mightn't come back in time for him to tell them before he dies.

\- He's dying.

\- Amanda was alone for five years, not sure who she was, where she was, or why she was.

Todd can't do anything except lie there, and let Bart hold his hand while she watches some period drama on Panto's Netflix and Silas's computer.

"It was nice of them to lend you their stuff." Todd whispers without moving his lips too much.

Bart turns to look at him, frowning. She doesn't really smile at him, anymore. She smiles at Panto and Silas, but she doesn't know how to look at Todd. He's long since given up on feeling upset about that.

"Yeah, well, they've been watchin' this show, together, and they thought I might like it." She replies, in an unsure kind of voice. It trembles when, only a few moments later, she continues, "You know, I hate that you're dyin'."

Todd does his best to laugh. "Join the club, I guess."

"It just sucks. Hey, why do all of my friends end up dying? Like, at least extend the favour and let me go, too."

"It's not nice, Bart."

"I ain't never said it was. I just...I'm always left behind, Todd. Ken, Dirk, Tina, and now you. You're leavin' me."

He squeezes her hand. “I wouldn’t if I could. I’d stay here dying with you forever-“

She laughs, and Todd stops. “Don’t say that.” Bart says. There’s a moment while they both watch the intense scene on the computer screen. “When you’re gone, the only people I’ll be able to talk to are Silas and Panto. You’re gonna leave me third-wheeling them for the rest of my life.”

He smiles, and it’s a little bittersweet, and it occurs to him then, that this might be the last time he talks to her. “Make it a short one and it won’t be too much of a hardship.” He murmurs.

“‘M working on it.” She replies.

“Don’t work too hard,” He tells her, entirely seriously, “Make the most of it while you’re here.”

She squeezes his hand back. “When it’s my time, we’ll see each other again. No sooner, I promise.”

~

He can feel it coming on. His parents have been in the hospital for two, maybe three days. They still haven’t talked to him, and it might be spite that forces him to decide that he won’t tell them about Amanda until they decide to talk to him. And it’s looking like they’ll never know.

Panto comes in to adjust his blanket, unruined due to his weak state, and Todd grasps at his wrist. “Are they just… sitting out there?”

Panto smiles a bit. “Yes, refusing to come in. You’d think they would lay down weapons at the end-“ he freezes, and seems to rethink his statement, and Todd does think it might have been going down a path Panto might call insensitive.

He nods. “Brotzman’s are stubborn. Look, if I’m not going to be able to talk to them before… I need to tell someone. Amanda, my sister, we all thought that she didn’t make it to San Junipero, but-“

“Wait, are you trying to tell me something that you should be telling your parents?” Panto raises his eyebrows.

“Yes…?”

“I’m making them come in. Right now-“

“No, please!”

But Panto has already marched out of the room, and down the hall to where is parents wait for him to be in distress. He lies back against the pillows, trying to relax his muscles, because he knows the stress of this will only bring on the attack. He has to give himself time.

Todd covers his eyes with his hands and takes a few deep breaths, trying to work himself up to this.

“He's much more active this afternoon.” He hears Panto say outside his door. Todd uncovers his eyes and looks up. His parents look less angry than they did, earlier. They just look scared and tired and sad. He's not sure that this will help. But they deserve to know, nonetheless.

“Mom, dad.” They venture into the room, pulling over chairs to sit down by his bed. They're more quiet than they have been in years. Panto hovers in the doorway, on high alert, as he's been instructed. “I'm not gonna make a big production of this, but it's a big deal.”

“What is it, Todd?” His mother asks in a small voice.

“I found Amanda in San Junipero.”

“No. She can't be there.” His father says bluntly, though he can see the hope in both their eyes.

“I thought so, too, I thought I was hallucinating, but she's actually there. The emergency procedure, the half-perfected system, it worked. She survived. She's there.”

“There's no way.” His father whispers, but his mother seems to be on the edge of tears.

“I'm not fucking with you guys.”

“How long have you known this?” His mom chokes out.

“A few days. You guys wouldn't talk to me. I was waiting for you to. But then I was scared I would die without ever telling you.”

“Are you sure it's her? Are you sure it's not just some girl who looks like her?” She asks.

“I talked to her, she knew my name, she knew how she died. It's her. It's Amanda.” He tells her, trying so hard to sound truthful, because they deserve to know this, they deserve to be absolved of the guilt he knows they feel for her death.

For the first time in months, his mother carefully takes his hand, his father holding their hands in his own. And they cry.

For a second, they are just the grieving family she left behind, and nothing more. For a second, Todd doesn't think of how close he is to death, how anything about this could set him off.

For a second, he's content the way he's only ever is in San Junipero.

~

As it turns out, it hurts to die. The attack is the result of a late night glass of water, after waking up from a nightmare. The hallucination tells him that there is nothing in his lungs but water.

Then his eyes sting with salt water and he can feel himself sinking.

Todd knows that he is not drowning, how else would he be screaming in agony so clearly? Todd knows he is really, truly dying this time.

And it hurts. And he can't breathe. And he is dying…

~

**Home**

Todd opens his eyes to stare at a sky full of stars in a city with so many lights but no light pollution to speak of.

He blinks up at it, and wonders what might be happening where he just left. Who uploaded him. Whether his body has gone still yet. He wonders if he is truly dead yet. And then he remembers where he is. And he remembers that he doesn’t have to think about it anymore. None of the pain or fear exist here.

The disease doesn’t exist here.

He’s _free_.

He smiles, and presses his elbows into the soft sand, and pushes himself up to look at the horizon of endless ocean.

Beside him, someone breathes serenely.

“You made it.” Dirk says, and Todd can hear the smile in his voice. It makes him want to smile too.

“Yeah, well, it was a toss up, really. The cigarettes don’t taste like anything here, but at least the stars are perfect.”

Dirk’s hand closes around his, and Todd can’t help the feeling that no matter what happens from now on, everything will be alright in the end. After all, they have forever to perfect it.

 

**fin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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**Author's Note:**

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